


Definitely Not Okay

by LadySokolov



Category: The Evil Within (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Eventual Romance, M/M, Psychological Horror, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Unreliable Narrator, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2017-03-06
Packaged: 2018-07-20 01:34:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 101,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7385617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadySokolov/pseuds/LadySokolov
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Joseph Oda and his partners are called to investigate a homicide case at Beacon Mental Hospital none of them are prepared for what they will find within. For Joseph the journey will mean coming face to face with his deepest, darkest desires and struggling to keep hold of his sanity.</p><p>AKA: The Evil Within from Joseph's perspective, with a continuation of the ending and more than a small amount of Joseb.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Beacon Mental Hospital

**Author's Note:**

> Okay. This fic is going to be fairly long. Stick with me, because I'm going to try to update this as regularly as I can. This has been something of a monster to write. For those of you who are here primarily for the Joseb, it's going to be a while, but I can promise you that we will get there. This is a little different to the sort of fiction I write, fanfic or otherwise and it's the first time I've attempted something with a focus on horror, so here's hoping that I manage to pull it off okay.
> 
> Thanks, and I hope you all enjoy Definitely Not Okay.

Joseph felt the lock click open as he turned the key, and breathed a sigh of relief. At least something was responding as it should, even if it was only his partner’s front door. He pushed the door open, holding his breath as he did. He wasn’t sure what he was afraid that he might find on the other side, but none of the scenarios that he had imagined over the last few hours were particularly appealing.

It had been raining outside, and his wet shoes tracked water into the hallway. He promised himself that he would clean it up as soon as he had established that Sebastian was okay and in no immediate danger. Compared to that a little bit of spoiled carpet was nothing.

The house was mostly in darkness, but a faint light was coming from further within.

“Sebastian?” Joseph called out as he fumbled for the hallway light switch, glad that he knew his partner’s house well enough to find said light switch in the dark. “Sebastian, are you home?”

There was no reply, but he hadn’t really been expecting one. Yelling and pounding at the front door hadn’t resulted in one after all. What was more yelling going to do?

He made his way into the living room and discovered that the light had been coming from the television. It was currently broadcasting some old black and white monster flick, but no-one was watching. Sebastian was sprawled out on one of the couches, his eyes closed and his body so still that for a moment Joseph feared the worst.

He ran over to the couch and kneeled down beside Sebastian.  The carpet felt surprisingly wet through his jeans, and Joseph looked down just long enough to take in the now empty bottle of whiskey on the floor, whatever contents had been left after Sebastian’s drinking session now left to soak the carpet and the denim of Joseph’s pants.

It didn’t matter. He would considered himself lucky if he escaped this night with no worse than alcohol-stained jeans.

“Sebastian!” he called out again, placing one hand on each of Sebastian’s shoulders and shaking gently. There was no response.

“Seb! Can you hear me? Come on… Please wake up.”

Sebastian’s skin was pale, and when Joseph pressed two fingers to the side of the other man’s neck he realised his pulse was extremely weak. Joseph forced himself to calm down and to take several deep breaths. At least there was a pulse.

“Seb!” Joseph shouted.

On the television screen someone laughed maniacally. Joseph whirled around, and found the remote nearby on the floor. When he picked it up he was unsurprised to find it coated in a thick layer of sticky, half-dried whiskey. He turned the television off, taking more than a reasonable amount of pleasure in silencing the actor that had dared to laugh at his friend’s latest low.

Joseph turned back to the couch, tempted at this stage to slap Sebastian awake and yet knowing that no matter how badly Sebastian scared him he would never be able to bring himself to raise a hand against the other man.

“Seb,” he growled. “Wake the fuck up. Please…”

Sebastian finally stirred at that, and Joseph’s heart skipped a beat as one of the other man’s eyes slowly opened up, both it and its partner snapping open quickly when he caught sight of Joseph kneeling in front of him.

“Joseph?” Sebastian murmured.

Joseph nodded and shuffled closer, debating whether or not to grab Sebastian’s hand as he did.

“Yeah, it’s me,” he said instead, deciding that if Sebastian needed physical comfort then he could damn well initiate it himself.

“What are you doing here?” Sebastian asked, his words surprisingly coherent for someone that was wincing and blinking through an obvious drunken haze. His breath still reeked of whiskey.

“I came to check on you,” Joseph snapped, his worry easily giving way to anger now that he knew his partner was at the very least, still alive. Perhaps it was a sign of how far Sebastian had fallen, but at this stage Joseph considered Sebastian’s still being alive a small mercy in and of itself. He had half expected to find…

No. He couldn’t think about that now, had to push the mental images of Sebastian’s cold corpse (the possible gun in his hand or the rope around his neck) to the back of his mind until he had dealt with all of this. Later he could fret and cry over fears and might-have-beens, (might-still-bes, a foolish, stubborn part of his mind insisted.)

“You don’t need to worry about me,” Sebastian muttered as he struggled to move to a sitting position.

“I don’t need to…?” Joseph crossed his hands in front of his chest and glared down at Sebastian. “I tried calling you four times, and Myra tried another three. You didn’t answer when I yelled or knocked at the front door. Of course I was worried!”

“I’m fine,” Sebastian protested. “I just... Where the hell is my phone?”

Joseph wished that he hadn’t been so quick to look around, or that he so easily found the phone on the coffee table in the middle of the room, no more than a couple of metres away from Sebastian.

“I didn’t hear a thing. Damn thing must have gone through its battery too quickly again,” Sebastian said.

Joseph picked up the phone and activated the screen. The battery was still at thirty-seven per cent, and only registered two missed calls, and yet Sebastian was telling him he hadn’t heard a thing. He wasn’t sure what hurt the most; that Sebastian had chosen not to answer when he and Myra had called, or that he felt the need to lie to him about it now. Joseph frowned, put Sebastian’s phone back down on the table, and then leaned down to pick up the empty whiskey bottle on the floor. He placed it down on the table, in between the phone and another identical, equally empty bottle.

“How much did you drink?” Joseph asked.

“I’m fine!” Sebastian objected as he tried to get to his feet. He sat back down almost immediately, his face turning a sickly, pale shade as he did.

Joseph scanned the sitting room for something that would work as a bucket but came up short, and just managed to make it back to the couch in time to hold Sebastian’s shoulders as he vomited up the contents of his stomach all over the carpet. Joseph desperately tried to look on the bright side; that part of the carpet would have needed to be cleaned because of the spilled whiskey anyway; but it was hard to think happy thoughts when Sebastian was shaking beneath his hands, his partner’s skin too cold and pale beneath his touch and his eyes too red and too lost as they looked up at Joseph.

“If you try to tell me that you’re fine one more time…” Joseph told him, letting the tail of the threat hang in the air.

He wasn’t sure what exactly he’d do. Right at that moment he felt like hitting Sebastian wasn’t entirely impossible anymore. More than anything he just wanted to scream at Sebastian; to shout and rant and rave until the other detective got it through his head that Joseph worried about him, still cared about him, was terrified that one day he was going to find Sebastian not sprawled out on the couch drunk, but dead in a ditch somewhere, or lying on the floor, his dark red blood staining the carpet rather than just whiskey and vomit.

“I would have been fine by Monday,” Sebastian said instead, which was hardly an improvement. “It’s only Saturday night, right?”

Joseph didn’t know what was more worrying; that Sebastian wasn’t even sure what time of day it was, or that he had planned to spend the entire weekend either drunk or hungover.

“Almost Sunday morning by now,” Joseph said. It had been just past two o’clock when he had looked at Sebastian’s phone.

“Myra’s not coming home then?”

“I don’t think so. One of us should probably let her know you’re still alive.”

Sebastian leaned back against the couch, one hand moving up to cover his face.

“You know, I get the feeling that these days Myra probably wouldn’t even notice if I did die.”

Joseph had grabbed a box of tissues off the table, and Sebastian muttered a thanks as he grabbed one and began cleaning the sweat and vomit off his face.

“And how did you come to that conclusion?” Joseph asked. “The three times she tried to call you this afternoon? She’s worried about you Sebastian. So am I.”

“I’m not going to do anything stupid Joseph.”

Joseph gestured to the stained floor and the empty bottles.

“You don’t think this was stupid?”

“I’ll be okay Joseph. I don’t need you trying to fucking protect me all the time.”

“I wish I could believe that.”

“I’ll be okay,” Sebastian insisted.

* * *

Joseph groaned as he regained consciousness, wondering if he shouldn’t just surrender and slip back into sweet darkness. Where the hell was he again? He tried to think back and remember what the hell had happened before he’d what… passed out? Been knocked out?

He could remember bits and pieces. He could remember…

_…being in the back of the car with Juli Kidman while Sebastian rode up front with Connelly. The call over the radio._

_“All units, all units; 11-99, expedite cover code three. Beacon Mental Hospital.”_

_Connelly, at the front of the car, responding to the call, suggesting that the ghost of a crazy doctor might be responsible. Foolish rumours with no truth to them. Sebastian all business, Kidman even quieter than usual, and then a burst of static…_

His vision was blurry. Joseph reached up to his face to make sure that his glasses were still there and was surprised to find that they were. He blinked a few times, trying to bring the world into focus, and had at least a small amount of success. There was a stabbing pain at the back of his head, somewhere near the top of his spine, and it was insisting on making itself known more and more with every second his eyes were opened.

_…arriving at Beacon Mental Hospital to find police cars empty of all officers and weapons, and the inside of the hospital strewn with bloodied corpses. They’d found one doctor alive, tucked within the security room, a look of absolute horror on his face. He’d said… something…_

_“… can’t be real… impossible… Ruvik is…”_

_Sebastian had walked over to check the security footage and then…_

Then nothing, just a loud buzzing in his ears and total blackness.

Joseph tried to push himself to his feet, wishing that the buzzing and the pain in his head would just stop. Another look at his surroundings revealed that he was still within the hospital, in the middle of the foyer, surrounded by dozens of corpses.

That wasn’t right though. When he’d passed out he’d been in the security room. How the hell had he made it out here? There was something different about the bodies around him too. They had already begun to decay, their skin darkening and peeling, putrid flesh peeking out from beneath wounds that looked more like the work of claws and fangs than any conventional weapon. Just how long had he been out?

“Don’t fight it.”

It was a deep gravelly voice that had spoken, and it had come out of nowhere. Joseph whirled around to find a man standing there, a large portion of his face obscured in the shadow of the ragged white cloak he was wearing. His chest, feet and half of his arms were bare, revealing pale skin covered in angry red patches that looked to have been left by bad burns some time earlier in the man’s life. Joseph was about to ask who the other man was, and what the hell he was doing there when the stranger continued.

“You don’t want to make this more difficult than it has to be. Trust me.”

“What? Make what more difficult?” Joseph murmured, annoyed at himself when he heard how weak and unsure his own voice sounded.

“You don’t want to end up like them, do you?”

The stranger gestured to a spot just behind Joseph.

The detective turned around, and what he saw made him recoil in horror.

Two of the people that had been laying on the floor were stumbling to their feet. Joseph could see the tears in their flesh, the now-dark blood that covered their previously pale hospital assigned scrubs, and knew that there was no way they could still be alive.

As Joseph watched, the undead man and the woman turned towards him and let out twin blood-curdling screams. Their bodies jerked in a way that was distinctly unnatural, before large shards of glass burst out of the woman, and a large coil of barbed wire appeared to erupt from inside the man’s own body to coil itself around him, wrapping around his chest and head and then moving back down around his arms.

Joseph glanced back to where the pale stranger had been standing, but there was no sign of him. He had completely disappeared. He glanced back to the man and woman in front of him. There was no way that this could be real. He must be dreaming. He had to be dreaming.

The undead man and woman seemed to settle into their tortured new forms, and turned around to look straight at Joseph, and the hungry grins they sent his way seemed all too real.

Joseph reached for his holster, cursing when he realised his pistol wasn’t in its usual location. Then he remembered that he had drawn it as soon as he and Sebastian had entered the hospital. He must have dropped it when he fell unconscious.

He searched around, but there was no sign of the gun in the surrounding area. He tried to get his bearings, and in the darkness of the foyer he spotted the security room, the last place that he could remember being before he had fallen unconscious.

He ran towards the room, the undead man and woman hot on his tail. He was almost there when one of the corpses on the ground; one that had been completely still up until that exact moment, reached out and grabbed as his ankle.

He cursed as he tripped and almost fell.

One glance down at his latest assailant revealed a man with what looked to be long metallic nails extending from his skull. Joseph was completely certain that none of the bodies on the floor had been impaled with nails or glass or wrapped in barbed wire when he and Sebastian had first entered Beacon Mental Hospital, but there was no mistaking the mutilations now.

He slammed his foot down on the dead man’s hand, feeling several bones snap beneath his heel as he did. He managed to shake off the grip, and then began sprinting the rest of the way to the security room, slamming the door shut behind him, praying as he did that the undead outside weren’t smart enough to know how to open doors.

There was no sign in the room of Sebastian or the doctor that they had found before. The camera feeds in front of him all appeared to be broken, and were all displaying the same pattern of black and white static.

Joseph found his gun waiting for him exactly where he thought he must have dropped it. Hopefully it was a sign that he wasn’t going completely crazy.

The undead that had attacked him earlier were clawing at the door now and occasionally throwing their entire bodies at it if the noises were any indication, making it rattle and shake so hard that Joseph was afraid they might break it off its hinges.

He prepared his gun, checking that the chamber was full and making sure the safety was switched off. All in all, he wasn’t sure that his situation was much better now. He had a weapon, but he was also completely trapped, with no way out except through the undead that were now crowding just outside the security room in an attempt to reach him.

He briefly considered kicking down the door and shooting whatever was waiting for him outside, but then the ground beneath him lurched, and he had to grab at one of the nearby benches to stop himself from falling over.

The ground shook again, this time even more violently, and Joseph found himself wondering whether this was an earthquake or something much more dangerous.

The ground continued to shake, the earthquake, if that was what it was, getting stronger and more violent rather than calming down, until a large crack began to open up right in the middle of the room.

Joseph clung to a nearby bench, trying to get as far away from the widening gap as was possible in such a small room. The gap widened, splitting the room completely in two. Joseph watched as the door frame splintered and then broke, the door travelling with the opposite side of the room to Joseph, and leaving him completely vulnerable to the undead that had been waiting outside.

Easily half a dozen were standing there now, all of them waiting for Joseph. If they were at all worried by the earthquake or the gaping maws that were beginning to appear in the ground around them then they weren’t showing it.

Joseph raised his gun with his left hand, trying to hold on to the bench with the other, and pointed the weapon straight at the nearest undead.

The earth lurched and shook again, and one of the undead fell to his doom without so much as a scream of complaint. Joseph shot the undead closest to him, the bullet lodging itself deep in the creature’s head and tearing off a chunk of brittle flesh and bone. It barely stopped the monster though, and Joseph shot at it again and again, his second shot going wide but the third hitting just as clearly as the first, and still not causing the creature to stop its slow, relentless journey towards Joseph.

The creature threw itself at him, its arms lashing out to grab hold of Joseph’s neck before he could react. Joseph let go of his precious grip on the bench, needing both of his hands to fight off the creature that was attacking him.

A particularly heavy punch to the undead man’s face convinced him to let go of Joseph’s neck, but then the ground shook and lurched beneath him again, and the next thing Joseph knew he was tumbling into the chasm.

Soon he couldn’t see anything at all but the black shadow of the pit, but he could feel himself falling, going deeper and deeper into the darkness.

Oh god. He was going to die. Soon he was going to hit the ground, and then he was going to die, his body lost at the bottom of this chasm, broken and hidden so deep that no-one would ever find it.

The world lurched one final time, giving Joseph the distinct feeling that he was now somehow falling in a different direction. The darkness began to fade towards light, and Joseph was granted a very brief view of a very familiar room, before everything went black again.


	2. Resistance

Light streamed into the office, the vertical blinds in front of the windows transforming it into soft stripes that broke up the rest of the room. It was late afternoon, the light was beginning to turn golden thanks to the setting sun, and Joseph Oda was content.

His eyes settled on Sebastian. His partner was frowning and muttering quietly to himself as he sorted through same papers on his desk. Joseph shook his head, shut the door quietly behind him and walked towards the other man’s desk. Sebastian didn't say or do anything to acknowledge his presence, or even so much as look up from the mess on the table in front of him until Joseph was only a couple of feet away.

“Why do you look so angry?” Joseph asked as he leaned against the side of the desk. “We saved at least two lives today, we solved the case, and we found enough evidence to make sure that Miller goes away for a _very_ long time.”

Sebastian replied with a wordless grunt and leaned back in his chair. The light from the setting sun bathed his face in a golden glow, and despite the obvious annoyance on the other man’s face, Joseph couldn’t help but think that right then, in that moment, Sebastian Castellanos was one of the most beautiful people he had ever seen.

The thought shocked him into silence for a moment, and seeing as Sebastian was still busy with his work neither of them said anything for a while, leaving Joseph alone with his own treacherous thoughts. It wasn’t as though his thinking about Sebastian in that way was particularly new; Joseph had come to terms with the fact that he found Sebastian attractive a while ago; but it was one thing to think that his partner was attractive, another thing entirely to look at his partner and feel that warm glow in his chest that he was afraid was growing disturbingly close to love.

He shook the errant thought away. He could introspect later and work out what it all meant when he was safe at home and wouldn’t be caught up by the sudden, inexplicable desire to reach over and run his hands through Sebastian’s hair.

Joseph realised then that Sebastian had finished staring at the papers in front of him, and had now turned a concerned gaze Joseph’s way.

Joseph cleared his throat and glanced nervously around their office.

“You’re allowed to be happy about this, you know?” Joseph said, when he could trust himself to speak again without sounding like a total fool. “We won.”

Sebastian shook his head, and Joseph waited for his partner to refute his claim; to say that for some reason it wasn’t a win, that the three women Miller had killed before they had managed to catch him made it anything but a win. It was the sort of thing an upset Sebastian would say.

“I’ll be happier when…” Sebastian began, and Joseph sighed and rolled his eyes.

“… when Miller is behind bars,” Joseph said. “I know, I know.”

Sebastian looked at him again, one of his eyebrows raising.

“I was going to say when I managed to make all of this damn paperwork go away,” Sebastian said, grinning softly at Joseph. “I’m going to be here for hours at this rate.”

“Don’t give me that look,” Joseph said, crossing his arms in front of his chest.

“What look?”

“You know which look I mean. The one that you’re doing right now, with your eyes and… Argh, Sebastian. You are not going to convince me to help you with all of that.”

“Please?”

There were the eyes again. God damn it, if Joseph didn’t know any better then he might have thought Sebastian already knew about Joseph’s possibly more than platonic feelings for his partner and was taking advantage of them as much as he possibly could.

Damn Sebastian and his damn sexy half-grin and his pleading eyes.

“No way,” Joseph said. “We bet on this for a reason. Your hunch was wrong, so you are stuck with the paperwork for this case.”

Sebastian tried again, not by saying a single word, but by turning those eyes on Joseph once more, and somehow this time the Look was even worse.

Joseph sighed and shook his head.

“I’ll get you a coffee,” Joseph offered.

Sebastian grinned, a little wider this time, and Joseph couldn’t help but return it, despite the fact that he was still attempting to be annoyed with Sebastian and his stupid grin, and stupidly effective puppy dog eyes.

“Don’t think that this means you’ve won,” Joseph told him right before he closed the door to their office behind him with perhaps a little more force than necessary. He had managed to banish the smile for a good couple of seconds, but it returned to his face once more as soon as the door had closed.

The smile stayed there as he moved towards the coffee machine, and didn’t quite leave it for a while, even when he returned to the office, one coffee in each hand. It even stayed when somehow Sebastian managed to convince Joseph to stay and help him with the paperwork after all, despite Joseph’s earlier objections.

They stayed in their office until the sun’s light had disappeared from the sky entirely, and then they stayed for several hours after as well, neither of them leaving until it was almost midnight.

It wasn’t that there was so much paperwork that they were both forced to stay there that long. They probably could have polished it off in an hour or so if they put their mind to it. Instead they spent their time simply chatting, unwinding after what had been a rather long and difficult case and laughing and joking despite, or perhaps because of what they had been through. When they both grew hungry they had pizza delivered to the station. Joseph insisted on borrowing a knife and fork from the station kitchen, and Sebastian teased him as he carefully cut his pizza.

“Seriously Joseph, who uses a knife and fork for pizza?”

The comment earned him a gentle poke in the arm with said fork and a return comment about the grease stains that now littered the papers Sebastian had been filling out. It was a familiar routine, and comfortable for the both of them.

For once in their lives neither of them had to worry about anything. It wasn’t as though Sebastian’s wife would be angry. Myra was a police officer, the same as them, and she understood the demands of the job better than anyone else could. Joseph didn’t have anyone to go home to; not since his wife had left him a couple of months ago, taking their young daughter with her.

Inside their office that night, things were pretty close to perfect.

And then, one week later, Sebastian’s daughter Lily had died, and it seemed as though all of Sebastian’s happiness died along with her. There wasn’t nearly as much smiling in their office after that.

* * *

 

The pain in the back of his head registered even before Joseph managed to open his eyes. Beneath the pain he still held a vague recollection of warmth and happiness, of golden light streaming in through a heavily blinded window, and of Sebastian smiling softly at him, all wide eyes and scruffy hair that looked as though it hadn’t been brushed in days. The memory brought with it an overwhelming sense of peace, and he wanted to hold onto it for as long as possible.

Then he remembered what had happened prior to his falling unconscious and he jerked awake, his eyes flying open as it all came back to him; the hospital, the murders… and oh god, what had happened to Sebastian?

The room that he was in was vaguely familiar. There were screens all around him, and in front of him a large glass window.

Yes, he knew this room. This was the security room off the foyer in Beacon Mental Hospital. Knowing that didn’t help as much as he hoped it was going to though. He might know where he was, but he had no idea how it was he had ended up there. He took another second to reorientate himself, blinking and trying to focus; a task which the excessive number of screens in front of him, each of them displaying static, were making incredibly difficult.

He was sitting on the floor. It was quite a sticky, uncomfortable floor, and when he looked around himself he realised that he was sitting in a pool of blood.

No. Wait.

Wasn’t this where someone else had been sitting before? Yes, he was sure that Sebastian had been talking to a man, one of the doctors, and he had been sitting right where Joseph now found himself.

There hadn’t been this much blood before though, had there? Had there been any blood. He couldn’t quite remember.

What had happened to the doctor? Was it his blood that was now soaking into the fabric of Joseph’s pants and staining the leather of his gloves? More importantly, what had happened to Sebastian?

And how had Joseph ended up back in the security room? The last thing he could remember was falling. Damn it, none of this made any sense. He must be concussed, or perhaps drugged. Either way he was clearly confused and missing a few vital pieces of information.

He stumbled to his feet and checked his pistol. That at least still seemed to be in perfect working order, and he kept it close as he walked over to inspect the rows of monitors. None of them displayed anything but static, no matter how much he fiddled with the controls.

He cursed softly to himself when he felt something sticky on one of the control panels. He pulled his hand away, expecting more blood, and was confused when the liquid on his fingers proved not to be the red of blood, but instead some sort of mostly clear substance that smelled sweet and vaguely like… alcohol of some kind?

Joseph cursed again and rubbed his fingers off on his pants, doing his best to rub off the mysterious translucent substance. As far as he was concerned it was just one more thing that didn’t make sense about this place, and was far from being the most worrying.

He walked over to the door of the security room and pushed it open.

The hospital foyer was exactly as he remembered it being when he and Sebastian had first walked in; dead, broken bodies everywhere that he looked. The entire place reeked of death, but he let out a sigh of relief.

After all of the oddness that he had already been through that day he had half expected to find himself in a completely different room. Clearly he had fallen unconscious or knocked his head or _something_ and the entire incident with the earthquake and the undead people had all been a horrible nightmare. It was the only explanation.

What he needed was to find Sebastian or one of the other officers. They would be able to explain what had happened and then everything would make sense. He was sure of it.

“Sebastian?” he called out, hoping that his partner would be somewhere nearby.

“Sebastian!” he called out again when there was no answer.

He made his way slowly towards the front doors of the hospital and tried to open them. They had been heavy last time, but this time they did not open at all, no matter how hard he pressed against them. They didn’t budge at all. Had someone locked them? Who the hell would do that? Why would they do that when Joseph was still inside?

“Kidman?” he tried, rapping on the doors as hard as he could. “Connelly? You guys out there?”

There was still no response from anyone, police officer or otherwise.

“Hey, whoever’s out there!” he tried, banging on the door as hard as he could. “Open up!”

Still no response.

Well, that was weird. Joseph started to feel the first signs of panic setting in; his heart racing as adrenaline seeped into his veins.

There was no sense in letting it get to him though. Sebastian and the others had to be around somewhere. He just had to find them.

He contemplated putting his pistol away, but he was still feeling incredibly uneasy, and as he started walking down one of the hospital’s corridors he found himself clutching the gun with both hands, his fingers digging into the metal so hard that they began to hurt. He occasionally called out for Sebastian and the others as he moved. There was never any sort of reply, but it made him feel better to think that any moment now he would hear an answering cry, or he would turn a corner and Sebastian would just be standing there, lost in thought as he inspected something. Sebastian would have the answers. All he needed to do was find Sebastian and then everything would be okay.

As he continued on through the corridors of the hospital Joseph couldn’t help but notice that his surroundings were slowly becoming less and less well… hygienic. At first it was just dirt on the walls, and a continuation of the slaughter that he had viewed in the hospital foyer, but then the smell of blood and gore grew stronger, and was eventually accompanied by the acrid stench of rotting flesh.

He turned a corner and then it all grew infinitely worse. For some reason this wing of the hospital had been left in complete disrepair. Holes in the ceiling were letting water and other, thicker fluids drip onto the floor below. There were cracks in the tiles, and it looked as though no janitor had stepped foot in this hallway for months, if not years. The only light source came from a broken fluorescent bulb that flickered and hung to the ceiling by one fraying wire, the fixture swinging backwards and forwards as though caught in a breeze.

Joseph wished that he had brought a torch.

“Sebastian?” he called out once more.

There was the sound of something scurrying somewhere further down the hallway. It was probably not Sebastian. Not that Joseph had any pressing desire to find out what it actually was. If his day so far was any indication then it was probably not the rat or stray bird that he was hoping for; more likely whatever (or whoever) it was that had been responsible for the carnage that still surrounded him.

He poked into each door as he passed it. Mostly he saw little more than empty beds and the occasional broken body. In one there was a smashed mirror, in the next a discarded doll that was just a little too realistic for him to be comfortable with its staring at him.

And then, at the end of the corridor he came to a closed door. He thought he could smell something terrible coming from behind that door. It didn’t help that there was a puddle of something dark seeping out from underneath it. The lack of light made it almost impossible to tell, but he had a feeling that the dark liquid was probably blood.

He took a deep breath, steeling himself for whatever he was going to find behind the door, and then, with more than a little trepidation, he pushed it open.

He had been prepared for a lot after what he had seen in the rest of the hospital, but the contents of the room still managed to shock him. Unlike the corridor someone had made sure that the lights in this particular room were still fully functional, allowing him to see every inch of the carnage that littered the room. Every single surface, from the floor to the two beds in each of the room’s far corners, was covered in blood and dismembered flesh. Joseph couldn’t see any bones, but it seemed like there was enough blood and gore to account for at least a dozen different people. The blood lay thick on the floor and lapped at the bottom of his shoes, and slowly dripped down from the ceiling. The smell of it was almost too much, and he hastily turned away, one hand pressed over his mouth and nose in an attempt to block it out.

This was really bad. He needed to find backup, now.

He ran back towards the front of the hospital. He was going to find a way out of this place if he had to break down the front door with his bare hands.

He had almost made it back to the foyer when the same hooded man from before appeared directly in front of him. The stranger hadn’t moved or walked in front of him; no, nothing as mundane as that. He was simply not there one moment and blocking Joseph’s path the next.

“You still haven’t given in, have you?” the stranger said, tilting his head a little and smirking at Joseph, as though something about the whole god-awful situation amused him.

“What the hell is going on here?” Joseph said, unsure whether he was asking the stranger in front of him or the world in general.

The stranger smirked again.

“Wait,” Joseph said, shaking his head and trying to get his thoughts in order. “You know, don’t you? You understand what’s happening?”

The man didn’t reply, just continued to smirk.

Between the pale stranger’s refusal to talk, and the smug grin that he insisted on sending Joseph’s way, Joseph was really beginning to hate the other man.

Well, he didn’t have to put up with this bullshit. He was a cop, and he was sure as hell going to act like one.

He brought his pistol up so that it was pointed directly at the stranger in front of him.

“You are under arrest for the murder of the residents of Beacon Mental Hospital, as well as the murders of several police officers,” Joseph said. “Now raise your hands in the air.”

If the presence of Joseph’s gun worried the hooded man at all then he made no move to show it. He just threw his head back and laughed, a deep echoing sound that seemed to make the hospital shake around him, and which sent shivers down Joseph’s spine.

“Stubborn, aren’t you?” the man said. He raised his hands and slowly began walking towards Joseph. “You really think that this situation can be made right with a murder charge? You think that could throw me in jail?”

Joseph shot at the approaching man, aiming for his leg. The gun went off once, twice. He wasn’t entirely sure of his aim for the first shot, but he was absolutely sure that the second should have hit. It hadn’t affected the other man at all though. He just kept walking towards Joseph, one slow, confident step at a time.

“That’s all right,” the man said, as he grew much too close for Joseph’s liking.

He shot again, this time aiming for the stranger’s chest. It had absolutely no effect on the other man. In fact, Joseph would have sworn that he saw the bullet pass straight through the stranger, as though the other man wasn’t actually there at all. What the hell was he up against?

“I can find a use for someone as simple as you,” the other man said, grinning as he did. One of his raised hands reached out for Joseph.

The police officer jumped back from the other man’s touch. He didn’t know what would happen if the other man touched him, but he didn’t want to find out. Instead he turned around, running away from the other man as quickly as he possibly could.

He couldn’t hear footsteps, but every so often he glanced back behind him, and the stranger was always there, always only a foot or so behind Joseph and always moving at the same, slow pace. How the hell was he keeping up? Like everything else about Beacon Mental Hospital it didn’t make any sense at all. Joseph turned a corner, and then another, hoping that he would either make it back to the hospital foyer or lose the other man in all the twists and turns.

He turned another corner, and then another, and then cursed as he found himself facing a dead end. He turned back, darted through the door of one of the rooms and breathed out of a sigh of relief when he discovered that the room had a hole in one of its walls. He ducked down so that he could squeeze through the hall in the wall and crawl into the next room. Part of him hoped that maybe it would be enough to stop the pale stranger from following him, but so far his luck hadn’t been that good, and he certainly wasn’t going to risk his life on such a hope.

He got back to his feet, and started running once more. He only glanced behind himself once more when he was back out into the hallway and heading back the way that he had come. The stranger was still right behind him, no closer or further away than he had been the last time Joseph had looked.

Joseph was beginning to run out of breath, but didn’t want to think about what might happen if he slowed down and potentially let the other man catch him. It wasn’t worth contemplating, not when he knew that the hospital foyer had to be so close.

For a moment he was afraid that he had gotten turned around somewhere. He could have sworn that this corridor should have taken him back to the foyer by now. Yes, there it was. He could just make out the foyer through the gloom in front of him.

He ran as fast as he could, the hope that those doors represented giving him one last burst of adrenaline fuelled speed. He was almost at the doors now. Almost.

And then he remembered that the doors had been locked last time, and came to an abrupt stop.

He glanced back over his shoulder to find the stranger still on the other side of the foyer, just standing there, further away now than he had been since they had started the chase. Joseph blinked, and suddenly the man was only a few feet behind him. Resisting the urge to scream, and wondering what the hell was happening to him, Joseph pushed at the front doors to the hospital and almost cried in relief when this time they gave way, creaking slowly open at his touch.

And then he was ready to cry when he was only greeted with the sight of another long hospital corridor.

What the hell? He was sure that this was the foyer, and that these were the front doors. Surely there was no other room like this in the hospital, certainly not one with the same security room, and the same doors, and the same broken bodies littering the chairs and the floor everywhere he looked.

Joseph looked behind him, and froze when he realised that the stranger in the white coat had disappeared completely. After a few more seconds there was still no sign of him, and Joseph breathed out a sigh of relief.

Well, he might be completely lost, but at least he wasn’t being chased by a ghost anymore.

A ghost? Was that what the other man had been? He had mentally scoffed at the idea when Connelly had suggested it in the car, but the idea was starting to seem a little more credible than he would have previously thought.

Well, there was nothing for it. He would just have to keep exploring the hospital until he found his way to an exit, and hope that the pale, hooded stranger didn’t show up again.

Joseph headed down the corridor in front of him, quickly scanning each room as he passed. None of them looked particularly clean, but then again, none of them held the same mass of gore as the room he had come across earlier, and there was no further sign of either the pale, hooded man, or of the tortured undead beings that he had fought earlier.

Before long he was well and truly lost. The hospital seemed a lot larger on the inside than it had looked from the outside, but maybe that was just his mind playing tricks on him again. Hell, he still wasn’t convinced that this wasn’t all just some sort of bad dream, and that soon he would wake up, having fallen asleep at his desk or something equally as mundane and embarrassing.

Eventually he found his way to a large room that didn’t look anything like any of the other rooms in the hospital. It seemed to be built from large red bricks, rather than the smooth plastered walls of the rest of the hospital, and here and there small plants had managed to sprout from cracks in the floor and walls. Daylight streamed in from a pair of thick dirty windows on the far wall.

It was almost pretty in its own strange way, and Joseph allowed himself to just relax and soak in the comparatively calm atmosphere for a couple of minutes.

He was just contemplating whether or not he should try breaking one of the windows and escaping the hospital that way when another door burst open and a figure ran into the room, large tan jacket flapping behind him.

Joseph raised his gun instinctively. The other man did the same as soon as he noticed Joseph, but it only took a second for each of them to recognise the other and for their guns to slowly start lowering.

“Joseph?” Sebastian asked, his eyes widening as he took in Joseph’s state.

The younger man chuckled, knowing that he must look as pale and frightened as he felt.

“Seb,” he sighed, lowering his weapon even further. “Oh god, you have no idea how relieved I am to see you alive.”

“I think I might have some idea,” Sebastian replied, lowering his gun and then tucking it back into its holster. “Jesus Joseph, where the hell have you been? I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

Sebastian then surprised him by pulling him in for a tight hug. Joseph found himself blushing. Sure, he and Sebastian were friends, but they had never really been the type for such physical displays of affection. Sebastian must have been through hell if _that_ was his reaction to their being reunited.

He was still flushed when they pulled apart, and he prayed that Sebastian hadn’t been able to feel the way that Joseph’s heart had been thundering in his chest at the unexpectedly close contact.

“Come on,” Sebastian said, grabbing Joseph by the arm and pulling him out of the room before Joseph really knew what was happening. “Come with me.”

“Come with you where?” Joseph asked, but Sebastian did not reply. Instead he just continued to drag Joseph back through the door that Sebastian had entered through.

“Sebastian?” Joseph asked again. “Where are we going?”

It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Sebastian. He did. He trusted him with his life in fact. It was just that everything else that day had been so strange and confusing, and he didn’t think he could deal with any more mysteries or strangeness than he already had.

They turned left, and then right, and then they were in a small hospital room that didn’t look all that different from many others that Joseph had already seen.

“Seriously Seb,” Joseph tried again. “What’s going on?”

“God damn it Joseph!” Sebastian snapped. “Would you just stop questioning everything and relax for a few god damn seconds?”

“What?” Joseph replied, immediately frowning at his partner. Just relax? How the hell was he supposed to relax!? “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this place is completely messed up. I’m not sure whether it was just something I imagined, but I saw people come back to life when they were clearly dead, I somehow survived having the earth disappear beneath me, and even if all of that was just a nightmare, which I’m still very much hoping it was, there’s a room back there somewhere with more blood than I’ve… than I’ve ever…”

Sebastian’s hands came up to gently cup either side of Joseph’s face, and Joseph’s breath caught in his throat. Sebastian’s face was so close to his own. He could see each and every wrinkle and mark, all of them so lovingly committed to memory so long ago.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Sebastian said, his right thumb slowly caressing a patch of skin on Joseph’s cheek. “You’re here with me, all right? You’re safe. We’re going to get out of this together, okay?”

Joseph found himself leaning in to Sebastian’s touch, drowning in the other man’s eyes. What the hell was happening?

“Just relax,” Sebastian whispered softly to him. “It’ll all be okay.”

Joseph leaned forward just that little bit more, so that his forehead pressed gently against Sebastian’s. Despite everything he had been through he felt himself relaxing against Sebastian, just as his partner suggested.

And then everything went black.

Again.


	3. Drowning

The first thing Joseph thought when he came to the next time was that he was getting really fucking sick of passing out. At least this time when he opened his eyes he was greeted with a much more familiar, much more welcome sight.

Golden light streamed in through the blinds of his and Sebastian’s office. He was sitting in his chair, at his desk, and everything seemed to be in its proper place, with the possible exception of Sebastian himself.

Sebastian’s desk sat empty and untidy on the other side of the room, but that wasn’t anything unusual in and of itself; not the mess or the fact that Sebastian was apparently somewhere else. Joseph’s partner had never been very good at sitting still, and there had been plenty of occasions where Joseph had remained back at the office, filling out paperwork or following leads from the safety of a telephone or a computer screen while Sebastian did actual legwork or dealt with the rest of the K.C.P.D.

Yes, it was just as he had thought; he had fallen asleep at his desk. Of course he had. All of that mess in the hospital was just a dream. Of course it was. Joseph leaned back in his chair and slowly looked around at the small room that he had shared with Sebastian since they had become partners.

He had grown to love this small room. No matter how much bullshit had passed between the two of them over the last couple of years there were more good memories here than bad ones.

It was weird though, he couldn’t remember what it was that he and Sebastian had been working on before he had fallen asleep. The dream had seemed so real. Oh well. He just needed to give himself a few moments to wake up and then it would all return to him.

He glanced down at the papers on his desk, hoping that something there would remind him what he and Sebastian had been working on. What he saw there woke him up more quickly than anything else possibly could have.

Right there, on top of all the other papers lay a missing persons poster, for Detective Sebastian Castellanos himself.

What the hell was this? Sebastian couldn’t be missing. Joseph had just seen him a little while ago, hadn’t he?

He was just about to get up and search for Sebastian around the rest of the station, when an unexpected noise stopped him in his tracks. It sounded like liquid, like water dripping from a leaky tap, only at a pitch that was both deeper and somehow more threatening, and it sounded like it was coming from right by his ear.

What the hell?

He turned around to find that there was small patch of liquid seeping through the ceiling. It dripped slowly onto the wooden floor below. Plop, plop, plop; each drop sounding much louder than it had any right to.

Joseph realised at that moment that he couldn’t hear any sounds coming from the rest of the station or the world outside; no voices or the buzzing of electronics or the hum of cars passing by in the street. There was only the soft noises that he himself was making, and the disturbingly loud dripping.

He moved over to the puddle and kneeled down, dipping a couple of gloved fingers in the mysterious liquid. He didn’t think that it could just be water. It was a pale amber rather than being completely clear and it had a sort of sweet scent to it, with perhaps just a hint of the chemical tang of alcohol. When he rubbed his fingers together he found that the liquid was quite sticky as well.

He glanced back up at the damp patch on the ceiling. The dripping seemed to stop as soon as he looked at it. He was almost convinced that it wasn’t going to start up again, when the ceiling abruptly started to bend and cave in, and then a veritable torrent of the strange amber liquid came flooding into the room.

It filled the room faster than seemed possible, pushing furniture aside and drenching photos and files. By the time that Joseph had made his way over to the door it had already reached his waist. He tried to open the door, only to find it locked and completely unresponsive to any of his attempts to open it.

And all the while the liquid continued to pour into the room, until it was above Joseph’s head and he was forced to swim.

After only a few more seconds it had filled the room completely, leaving Joseph with no air at all. He was drowning in the stuff. It stung his eyes and soaked through his clothes, leaving him feeling as though he would need at least a dozen showers before he could be completely clean again.

Clean. Right, because that was the worst thing about this. He couldn’t breathe. He needed to breathe, but if he opened his mouth then the liquid would come flooding into his lungs.

Oh god, was this how he was going to go? No, he wasn’t going to die here, not without a fight. He tried swimming over to one of the windows. Moving in the strange, sticky liquid was harder than he had anticipated, but he made it over to one of the windows and started to kick and pound at it. The entire K.C.P.D. office had been fitted out with bullet-proof glass though, and the window showed absolutely no sign of giving way, no matter how hard he hammered at it.

He needed to breathe. He couldn’t hold his breath any longer.

Oh god. This was really it. He was going to die. He should probably be panicking, but instead he found himself taken over by a surprisingly strong sense of peace and calm. He wouldn’t have to worry about anything anymore. He could be free of this nightmare that he had fallen into.

He wished that he could have seen Sebastian one last time, if only to make sure that his partner was all right.

And then he closed his eyes, and opened his mouth.

* * *

 

And then immediately opened his eyes again as he felt himself breathing in real, actual air. He blinked a few times, trying to make sense of his surroundings.

This was not the office. This was not anywhere that he recognised at all.

Joseph coughed, feeling his body ejecting a large amount of a thick sticky liquid that was definitely not the same as the one that had flooded the office. He narrowed his eyes as he took in the sight of his partner, crouching beside him with worry in his eyes, his hands hovering near Joseph.

Sebastian had somehow lost his trench coat while Joseph had been unconscious, and he was sporting several small wounds. He was also covered all over in dirt and other stains that looked far too organic in nature for Joseph to want his thoughts lingering on them for any more than a moment. Sebastian didn’t seem to have any serious injuries though. That was good.

Well, it was good assuming that the Sebastian standing in front of him was real and not just another delusion. Hell, he wasn’t sure that anything he had experienced so far was real, so why should Sebastian be any different?

“Thank god you’re okay,” he heard Sebastian say beside him.

 “I don’t know what I am,” Joseph replied, meaning every word, “but it’s definitely not okay.”

Joseph looked around, trying to make sense of his surroundings. Sebastian appeared to have helped him from a large white bath tub that was still coated in the same thick liquid he had coughed up. The base of the tub was lined with a few soft red shapes that had been cradling his head and which looked far too much like flesh for Joseph’s taste.

The room itself was dark, but what Joseph could see was a strange mix of cold and clinical, and completely filthy and unhygienic, like a hospital that had been left abandoned and in disrepair for decades. There were stains everywhere, and like many of the stains on Sebastian’s clothing and skin, Joseph did not want to contemplate what had caused them. Where the hell were they? Was this still inside Beacon Mental Hospital?

“You brought me here?” Joseph asked Sebastian.

Before Sebastian could reply Joseph found himself coughing again. There was something still stuck in his throat, and at first he thought it must have been more of the disgusting liquid from the tub trying to make its way out, but this time as he coughed there was a sharp pain inside his chest, like someone was stabbing him from the inside out.

He winced, and then suddenly the pain grew, stretching so that it felt like it was reaching all the way up his spine and trying to bury itself in his head. He clutched at his head, heard someone screaming and realised too late that it was him making that noise. Oh god, what was happening? He had never been in so much pain.

And then the pain faded as abruptly as it had begun. It was still there, lurking at the back of his mind, but at least Joseph could think straight.

“Jesus, what happened?” Joseph asked, hoping that his partner would have at least some answers. Had he been hit in the back of the head at some stage? It sure felt like it. What the hell was going on?

“My head feels like… Like…” he gasped, trying to think through the pain, and then he froze as he heard a familiar and at that moment, extremely terrifying sound.

Plop. Plop. Plop.

Like liquid falling to the ground, except far more amplified, and right next to his ear.

“Do you hear that?” he asked Sebastian.

His partner just looked confused, and more than a little worried. So Sebastian probably _couldn’t_ hear it. That was not a good sign.

“We need to get out of here,” Sebastian told him, leaning down to offer Joseph a hand up off the ground. Joseph took it gladly. He was still more than a little disoriented after the whole ‘drowning’ thing, not to mention the earthquake and the strange hooded man, and hell, he hadn’t felt at all comfortable or competent since they had first stepped inside Beacon.

“Can you move?” Sebastian asked him.

Joseph carefully extricated himself from Sebastian’s gentle support.

“Yeah, I…”

He didn’t get any further before he was falling to the ground on one knee, Sebastian calling out in concern as he did. Jesus, he felt as weak as a kitten right now. He had not been expecting that.

He just needed a few seconds to get control over his body again, and then he would be fine. There was no reason for him to worry about the stabbing pains in the back of his head and his gut, or the fact that he could still hear that constant dripping noise right by his ear.

Hell, the dripping sound was actually starting to fade a bit. That was a good sign, right?

Sebastian crouched down beside him the whole time, hovering nearby and watching him carefully. When Joseph managed to look over at him he realised that his partner was staring at him with the same sense of worry as before.

Joseph took another couple of seconds to steady himself and make sure that the pain had faded to levels where he could actually think once more, before making another attempt to stand. Sebastian’s arms immediately reached out to help him to his feet, supporting his weight as though Joseph was about to drop at any second. He probably should have been annoyed that Sebastian was treating him as though he was made of glass, but in truth it was actually sort of nice to have the man that he cared so much about fussing over him like that, and when he shrugged off the unneeded assistance he was very gentle about it.

With that they were off, heading out of the strange room in which Joseph had woken. Sebastian seemed to have at least a vague idea of where they were going, and so Joseph allowed him to take the lead without so much as an objection. He had a thousand different questions that he wanted to ask. After all, he still had absolutely no idea what was going on, but he supposed that he could wait until he was in less pain and feeling more coherent to get his answers. Perhaps he would even make sense of some of it by himself.

He followed Sebastian almost blindly as his partner lead them through a couple of rooms, the older man rummaging around while Joseph stood with his pistol at the ready, hoping that he wouldn’t have reason to use it. The worst of the pain had gone, but Joseph still didn’t feel well.

Sebastian turned a corner in front of him and then dropped to his haunches, gesturing for Joseph to do the same. Sebastian crept along in front of him, and Joseph did his best to follow as quietly as he possibly could.

His partner snuck up behind a woman in a nurse’s uniform and jumped onto her, quickly snapping her neck before Joseph had realised what it was that Sebastian was planning to do.

He stifled the cry of shock that threatened to spill from his mouth at having witnessed Sebastian do something so violent. Sebastian had wanted them to remain silent for a reason, after all. Then the body of the woman fell to the ground and Joseph saw that she had suffered the same strange mutilations as the undead things that he had fought in the foyer of the hospital. Sebastian clearly had some experience with those monsters as well.

They were currently in some sort of hospital ward, and as Joseph watched, his partner systematically made his way from bed to bed, lighting a match and then dropping them onto the sleeping bodies within each bed. Each time, without fail, the undead creatures within lurched to life, screaming and flailing as their bodies caught fire.

A single match for each of them shouldn’t have been enough for them to catch fire, unless… well, their beds were soaked in oil or something. Sebastian’s behaviour too seemed a little out of sorts, but Joseph wasn’t about to question it, not when Sebastian seemed to be acting as though he knew exactly what he was doing.

All the while the strange dripping sound droned on inside of Joseph’s mind, but he was starting to grow used to it. It wasn’t that he didn’t find it disturbing any more. Hell, he still found Sebastian’s behaviour _extremely_ disturbing, and if it wasn’t for the fact that he himself had gone through hell over the last whoever knew how many hours then he might have called him out on it. As it was though he could do very little but follow along behind Sebastian and watch his back.

Joseph himself was of little to no help, at least until they went down a set of stairs and reached a new room, and there, on the door through which they would undoubtedly need to travel, sat a very large, very complicated bomb. Compared to the old, dilapidated hospital rooms in which they had found it, the bomb was very modern and sophisticated. It felt more than a little out of place.

It was just as well that Joseph was there then. Among other things, Joseph Oda prided himself on being quite the accomplished explosives expert. Without him Sebastian would have been screwed. With Joseph there, he was sure that the two of them could get past this obstacle.

It was time for him to prove that he wasn’t completely useless.

“This looks pretty sophisticated,” he told Sebastian as he approached the bomb, blinking against the harsh, red, flashing lights attached to the bomb.

Come to think of it, it seemed _too_ sophisticated. There was no way that the mindless undead things that they had been fighting were capable of rigging up something like this. Was there?

“Why would they put a bomb like this?” Joseph asked, more thinking aloud then expecting Sebastian to provide him with an answer.

Still, he approached the bomb with caution. Something about this didn’t feel right at all.

“So you think we can get past it?” Sebastian asked him.

Joseph hoped so. He was certainly going to give it a try.

“Stand back,” he told Sebastian. “Let me see if I can disarm it.”

He waited until Sebastian had moved back several feet. It wasn’t really far enough that he would be protected if the bomb were to go off. It had enough explosives within it to level a couple of rooms at the very least, but Joseph knew from experience that he wouldn’t be able to get Sebastian to move any further away from him than he already had; not when Joseph was putting himself in danger. It had been the same the few other times that he had been forced to disarm a bomb while working with his partner.

Really, sometimes Sebastian’s protectiveness could be rather sweet, if a little annoying and misguided. There was no point in them both blowing up, but there was no time for the two of them to be arguing over something so petty. Not right now.

Joseph kneeled down so that he could get a closer look at the bomb. Ideally he would have had a full set of tools with which to disarm the thing, but he would have to make do. He tried to always be prepared as possible, and carried a couple of small lock-picking tools which were useful in a variety of situations, including, he had discovered, the disarming of explosives.

The bomb proved to be as sophisticated as he had initially assumed, but it was nothing that he hadn’t seen before, and before long he had removed the bomb from the door and cleared the way in front of them. It had been surprisingly easy actually, if he was being honest, and Joseph allowed himself a few moments of proud satisfaction as he and Sebastian continued into the next room.

He had only taken a few steps however when the dripping sound came back at full force; so loud that it didn’t even sound like liquid anymore, but something else. Something far more threatening. And this time it was accompanied by a buzzing sound that started off low and then swiftly crescendoed to a painfully loud level that sent a shudder of fear through his whole body. The pain in his head blossomed into new, almost unbearable levels, and his stomach felt as though it was pulling itself apart.

He slammed his eyes shut and clamped his hands over both of his ears, but it did nothing to block out the sound, or to lessen his pain. When he opened his eyes once more he was seeing red, his heart was pounding so hard in his chest that he thought it might find a way to tear itself out of his chest, and he could feel nothing but pain and somewhere, at the back of his mind, a dark, primal fear.

He was not okay. He was so very far from okay. Nothing would ever be all right again. He was never going to feel anything ever again that wasn’t this maddening level of pain. He wanted to tear out the glass in his stomach, wanted to rip off his skin and remove the barbed wire that was winding around his bones.

He wanted… He just wanted the pain and the fear to go away.

And then it did. It was as though he couldn’t feel anything at all anymore. No pain. No fear. No anything. After the painful way that his insides had been twisting around inside of him the numbness was enough of a relief that it felt like pure bliss.

He was vaguely aware that his body was moving without his control. He wasn’t sure that he could be bothered stopping it though. Why should he when the pain had finally stopped?

His mind felt strangely warm, as though it was wrapped inside a nice warm blanket. And somewhere, far from his own mind, his hands were wrapping around his partner’s throat. He was… He was strangling Sebastian? Or at least trying to. No. No, that wasn’t right. That wasn’t right. He had to… He had to do something.

The feeling that had been warmth before now swiftly transformed into a raging wild fire that threatened to burn him to ash should he continue to resist. He had to fight whatever this feeling was though. Pain or no, he could not allow himself to hurt Sebastian.

His body lurched to the side, and he realised that somehow Sebastian had managed to shake him off. Sebastian had managed to fight it; had managed to fight him. He hadn’t let that noise beat him. Joseph couldn’t let it beat him either. He had to get himself under control. He had to fight it somehow.

He pushed through the pain, trying to get hold of his own body once more, and soon the buzzing started to fade, taking the burning pain that coated his entire body with it. Or at least some of it. All of his muscles still felt cramped, and the pains in his stomach and at the back of his head still remained to some degree.

He gently removed the glasses from in front of his eyes and forced himself to take a few deep breaths. The thrumming in the back of his mind was still there, no matter how hard he tried to will it away, but he forced himself to work through it, to make sure that he gained control over his own body once more, and that he kept it.

He felt something damp just beneath his nose and reached up one gloved hand to wipe it away. The glove came back with a smear of blood on it; not all that surprising really considering how much pain he had been in, but he immediately dismissed that discovery as being not at all important considering what had just happened.

Had that buzzing noise, whatever it was, made him attack Sebastian? No, that couldn’t have been it. After all, he was reasonably sure that Sebastian had heard the noise as well. He could vaguely remember Sebastian shouting something in response to it.

But Sebastian hadn’t gone crazy and tried to kill his partner.

Joseph had.

“Joseph?”

The sound of his partner’s voice pulled Joseph out of his dark reverie, and helped to calm his heart, if only a little.

“After Connelly I thought…” Sebastian continued, voice surprisingly calm and soft considering Joseph had nearly killed him.

Connelly? What the fuck did Connelly have to do with anything? Sebastian was approaching him, and seemed more concerned about Joseph himself than about what had just transpired.

Maybe he was right to be worried about Joseph. After all, he had just tried to kill Sebastian; his partner, the person that he cared most about in all the world.

The person that he loved.

Clearly there was something very, very wrong with him.

“I… I don’t know what came over me,” Joseph told him, trying to rationalise what had just happened and failing miserably. He had to pause as his insides twisted once more, sending a sharp spike of pain all the way from his stomach up through his lungs and to his throat, making him curl up and surrender to a small coughing fit.

“I haven’t been feeling well,” he told Sebastian when he could finally speak again, knowing as he did that he was well and truly understating things. He was hallucinating and in more pain that he could ever remember being before.

“But…” he tried to speak, tried to say that he was glad that Sebastian had been with him through it all, or that he was sorry for what had just happened. He didn’t even know where to start.

He put his glasses back on and looked back up at his partner.

Would it be too much for him to ask Sebastian to hold him like he had before? Even if that had resulted in him being transported to their office and almost drowning, it was the most peace and comfort that he had managed to find since coming to this god awful place.

Sebastian was looking at Joseph, not with affection, however, but with pity and something else etched clear on his face. Was that suspicion? Perhaps that was inevitable. Joseph wouldn’t trust someone that had just tried to kill him either.

God damn it. He just wanted this all to be over. He wanted things to go back to normal.

He waited for Sebastian to say something, perhaps for his partner to tell him that he could no longer trust Joseph, and that it would be better if they just went their separate ways. Joseph certainly wouldn’t blame him.

“Look, let’s just get out of here,” Sebastian finally said. “There’s something wrong with this place.”

“Yeah,” Joseph said. He couldn’t agree with that more.

Sebastian turned to leave, and another, smaller bout of coughing took hold of Joseph once more. Oh god, it felt like barbed wire was twisting around inside of his torso, not a comforting thought when he had seen actual barbed wire burst out of someone’s chest earlier that day.

He had covered his mouth with one gloved hand when he had coughed, and when he pulled his hand away he discovered that he was beginning to cough up blood.

He wasn’t surprised by that; not when the coughing had been accompanied by so much pain.

But he was worried by it.


	4. The Doctor

When Kidman had first been assigned to them, Joseph really hadn’t had any problem with her. He had, in fact, hoped, perhaps a little too optimistically and naively, that having to babysit a rookie might turn out to be exactly the sort of responsibility and distraction that Sebastian needed to help him get over the loss of his wife and daughter and to get him to start thinking like the damn good detective that Joseph knew he could be.

Sure, it wasn’t as though Sebastian’s performance at work had been particularly awful, but Sebastian’s heart clearly wasn’t in it anymore. He used to be passionate about his work as a detective, but by the time Juli Kidman had arrived Sebastian had been more like a ghost, wandering the halls of the K.C.P.D. offices in a mindless haze.

And so, when Juli Kidman was introduced to them, Joseph wanted to like her on principle. He had been ready to welcome her to the precinct with open arms, had been hoping that the three of them would end up as friends, but only a few seconds after shaking her hand Joseph came to the rather disturbing realisation that he did not actually like or trust Juli Kidman, and he wasn’t sure that he ever would.

There was something that was just off about her. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was. She had been nothing if not friendly and polite. Perhaps she was _too_ friendly? No, that wasn’t it. It was more likely the fact that when she smiled it never really reached her eyes.

On some cases Juli Kidman was exceedingly diligent and inquisitive. On others it just seemed like she didn’t really give a damn. And perhaps that was normal enough (they all had their own interests and biases after all) but Joseph just couldn’t shake the feeling that something _wasn’t right._

He started paying more attention to their junior officer, keeping an eye on her whereabouts and investigations. Perhaps he could have stood to be a little less obvious about it, because it wasn’t long before Sebastian was teasing him about having a crush on Kidman.

Joseph had laughed at that idea so hard that tears had started to stream from his eyes. Oh, if only Sebastian had known the truth; that Joseph’s love was, at that time, all being wasted on Sebastian himself. His partner hadn’t questioned him about his fascination with Kidman again after that one embarrassing incident, but Joseph made sure that his attempts to investigate the woman were more subtle after that.

He did start to wonder though. Maybe he was just being paranoid. Maybe, just maybe, there was nothing suspicious about Juli Kidman at all, and it was just jealousy that was stopping him from liking her. Maybe he had just grown so used to having Sebastian’s attention all to himself that now he was instantly and irrationally biased against anyone else that dared to claim a large share of Sebastian’s time as their own.

God, he hoped that wasn’t the case. That would make him a particularly terrible sort of person, after all.

* * *

They continued on, Joseph still so disoriented that he followed Sebastian blindly and without question. Before long they found themselves in a large, double-storeyed room that looked completely out of place in a hospital, with a balcony, a long, sweeping staircase and tall windows that were completely opaque thanks to a heavy coat of grime and dust. Like so many of the other rooms that Joseph had explored so far, it was very poorly lit, full of dark corners in which anything could have been lurking, and in the centre of the room stood some sort of large glass and steel contraption. There appeared to be a figure in the middle of it too, trapped inside the glass cage.

“Kidman!” Sebastian cried out, recognising their junior officer before Joseph did.

The woman seemed to hear them, and turned around, slamming her fists against the inside of her glass prison.

“Get me out of this thing!” Kidman screamed at them.

Joseph’s eyes were already roaming around the room and over the tank in which Kidman was trapped. Sebastian seemed ready to charge down there in an attempt to save Kidman without so much as another thought, but Joseph stopped him before he could make it more than a couple of steps. He had noticed what Sebastian had not; the undead things that were lurking in every corner and dark shadow of the room below, ready to pounce on the both of them the second they attempted to rescue Kidman.

The tank itself was rigged up with elaborate electronics as well, and who knew what they would do if they were tampered with?

“Wait a minute,” he told Sebastian. “It’s another trap. Look.”

Sebastian’s gaze moved to where Joseph was pointing.

“It’s much more elaborately…”

Joseph didn’t get to say anything more before something charged at him from behind, causing him to overbalance and fall over the railing, landing awkwardly on the floor below, right beside their trapped junior officer.

The sound of Sebastian fighting off at least one of the undead creatures reached Joseph’s ears, and he stumbled to his feet, ready to charge back to his partner’s side and help him fight.

“Joseph, are you all right!?” Sebastian called down to him.

Well, if he had time to talk then it probably meant that Sebastian wasn’t too bad off. That was one less thing that Joseph had to worry about. That didn’t mean that he was in the clear though, and as he got back to his feet he became all too aware of the undead things that seemed to be approaching him from every direction.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Joseph said as he drew his pistol from its holster on his side. “I think you better get down here…”

It wasn’t just the undead things either. Now that he was closer to the glass cage in which Kidman was trapped, he could see that water, or some other clear liquid, was slowly making its way inside. The water was rising, and Kidman was trapped inside.

Joseph hadn’t really thought about the strange few minutes that he had spent drowning in his and Sebastian’s office. He had dismissed it as no more than a horrible nightmare and of no significance whatsoever, but now that he saw Kidman trapped behind the glass and shrinking helplessly from the liquid that was lapping at her legs, it came back to him in a rush of sensations that were far too realistic to just be a dream; the rush of the liquid as it had pulled him under, the feeling of it invading every inch of his skin and hair, and then slipping down his throat…

“Hold on,” Sebastian called back, the sound of a pair of gunshots punctuating his words, and snapping Joseph out of what had almost been a panic attack. “I’m coming!”

Joseph didn’t have long to wait. Sebastian came charging down the staircase that connected the two levels, shooting one undead thing and then setting another alight. Joseph did what he could, shooting one of the creatures, aiming for the head and hoping that would be as effective as it always seemed to be in zombie movies.

His attempts at least kept the undead things at bay until Sebastian could join him, and the two of them fought back to back against the hoard.

Joseph wasn’t sure that he would have been able to handle even half this number of undead on his own. Whatever Sebastian had been through since they had been separated, he had clearly learned how to fight these things with a ruthless, almost terrifying efficiency.

As perfect as his new fighting technique seemed to be however, it was inevitable that Sebastian was going to slip up against this many enemies. One of them managed to grab Sebastian by the arm, and Joseph let out a cry of alarm.

The thing moved as though it intended to sink its teeth into Sebastian’s neck, but Joseph brought his pistol up, shooting the thing twice in the head at almost point blank range, before shoving the creature off Sebastian, it’s now limp form falling to the floor and leaking a strange, viscous green liquid that was about as far from normal blood as it was possible to be.

He was beginning to hope that they had seen the last of them when another wave appeared, charging at them from all sides. He heard Sebastian curse at his back, and wished that he had more to defend himself and Sebastian with than the standard K.C.P.D. issue pistol in his hands. Sebastian seemed to have found a veritable arsenal of weapons in his travels, and was using every single one of them to keep the undead things at bay.

Eventually it seemed as though they had run out of things to fight, and Joseph took a moment to check on his partner. Sebastian was sporting a few scratches and bruises that had not been there before, but he didn’t seem worried by them at all, immediately dismissing Joseph’s concern in order to check on Joseph himself.

“Dammit,” Sebastian cursed as he gave Joseph another look over. “That was close.”

They didn’t have time for Sebastian to worry over him though, and Joseph moved to check on Kidman. While they had been fighting the water had risen to Kidman’s shoulders. She looked over at Joseph with pleading eyes as he made his way around the cage, trying to find a way to get their junior officer out of the trap.

“You better come have a look at this,” Joseph called out to Sebastian.

His partner made his way over to the trap while Joseph continued to inspect the exterior. There was no obvious latch, but he found a control panel on one side of the contraption. It didn’t respond to his touch, but there was a series of cables that stuck out of the top of the panel that looked rather hopeful, and he followed the cables with his eyes as they trailed across the room and made their way to a small alcove. An alcove, which was, of course, not accessible from where they currently stood.

“I can’t get the thing open,” Joseph told his partner, suddenly aware of Sebastian standing right beside him and looking between Joseph and Kidman, his concern clearly etched on his face.

“I think there’s another control panel around here,” Joseph said.

Inside the glass cage Kidman had her hands pressed against the glass and was looking out at them, a mixture of hope and fear in her eyes.

She looked helpless; far more helpless than Joseph could ever remember her acting before now. It was something that he had found simultaneously admirable and mildly concerning about their junior officer; no matter how bad the situation that they found themselves in or no matter how disturbing the case that they were assigned, she never seemed all that affected.

Right now she seemed absolutely terrified. It was certainly not doing anything to calm his own fears.

“We’re running out of time,” Joseph said, noting that the level of the water inside the tank was rising at an alarming rate.

“Where do these cables go?” Sebastian asked, his eyes following the same cables that Joseph had spotted a moment ago.

“I’ll go,” Sebastian insisted. “Tell me what to do.”

Why was Sebastian asking for his guidance? He was sure that he only had a slightly more coherent grasp on how the device worked than his partner did. Hell, he was guessing here, but guessing was all that they currently had, and they desperately needed to find a way to get Kidman out of the glass cage.

Sebastian headed off, following some of the cables down a small corridor in one corner of the room. Joseph watched him go, hoping as he did that they weren’t going to get separated again.

He forced himself not to worry too much about Sebastian, and focussed instead on Kidman.

“Don’t worry,” he told her. “We’re going to get you out of there.”

Joseph wasn’t sure whether or not Kidman could hear him behind the heavy glass, but judging by her expression his attempt had, if not comforted her, then at least made her mildly less terrified. He had never seen Kidman this scared before, and he wasn’t sure whether it was the rising water, just this place getting to her like it no doubt was all of them, or whether it was a sign that something else was very, very wrong.

The sound of gunfire suddenly echoed around the room, and Joseph and Kidman turned to look at one another, their surprise and shock mirrored on each other’s faces. The noise sounded like it had come from the direction in which Sebastian had set off.

There was no time to worry about Sebastian though; not when Kidman herself was so close to death. He kneeled in front of the device holding the glass cage together, and tried to figure it out. There were two large round safe dials attached to one panel of glass, and it looked as though a certain input would cause them to pull back, bringing the pane of glass with them and opening up that side of the cage, but he couldn’t work out for the life of him how to make them move. Hopefully things would be clearer at Sebastian’s end.

“Help me!” Kidman cried out, slamming her hands against the glass in front of Joseph.

He looked up, and the panic that he saw there in Kidman’s eyes was all too familiar. He had never really grown to like Kidman, but after his own, far too recent brush with drowning he felt a strange sort of camaraderie with her.

“We’re going to get you out,” he told her. “Sebastian is going to find a way.”

Kidman nodded, just before the liquid rose to cover her mouth. She only had a few inches left now, and she had to angle her face up to gasp at what little air was left. There would be no more cries for help; no more talking at all if Sebastian didn’t find a way to open the panel, and soon.

The undead things that they had been fighting had carried dynamite, and for one brief, crazy moment, Joseph entertained the idea of trying to scrounge some up and blowing the glass cage to pieces. It was too risky though; the odds of his hurting Kidman seemed just as great as those of him actually helping her with such a stunt.

Maybe if he shot at the device on the side? No. He had to trust in Sebastian.

Luckily the other man seemed to have made it to the control panel on the other side of the room. Joseph wouldn’t have noticed it, except for Sebastian calling out to him as though in response to something that Joseph had said.

Joseph hadn’t said a thing though.

He shook his head, and hoped that Sebastian wasn’t losing it as much as he was.

Whatever Sebastian was up to though, it was enough to get a response from the device in front of him. The dials on the glass turned, and Joseph jumped to the side as the glass panel swung out, the liquid inside rushing out and Kidman falling out with it.

Now that the cage was open Joseph could smell the liquid in which she had been about to drown. Part of him had, in some small, twisted, fatalistic sense, expected it to be the same alcoholic substance that had almost drowned him. It had certainly been murky enough that he wouldn’t have been at all surprised if it turned out to be more than water. The smell from inside the tank was completely lacking the sickeningly sweet odour of the other liquid though. At most it smelled like the sort of old, murky water that had been lying dormant in pipes or tunnels for years.

“Are you all right?” Joseph asked her as he attempted to help her back up, scanning her face closely as he did.

He was still worried about her early behaviour. She had been uncharacteristically frightened and needy, more damsel in distress than the cold, collected junior officer that he was used to. In a way it didn’t really surprise him. After all, he had already been through a similar experience, and nothing about the experience during or after had been comforting. He wondered if she too was feeling the strange stabbing pains in her stomach or at the back of her head. Was she going to turn at any second and attack the two of them as he had done Sebastian? He hoped not, but there was no way that he could be sure.

He resolved to keep a close eye on Kidman, at least for the time being. Even if she wasn’t going to turn then she wasn’t feeling very well if her earlier behaviour was any indication.

He hadn’t even managed to pull Kidman back to her feet when suddenly the ground gave out with no warning at all, sending them both plunging into the darkness and the unknown.

Beside him Kidman let out a cry.

Joseph landed on hard ground. His chest and legs hurt, but a quick inspection revealed that nothing was seriously damaged. He forced himself to his feet and looked around at the area in which he had fallen.

It was dark, but not so dark that he couldn’t see the rocky cavern walls that surrounded him on all sides. He didn’t think that they had fallen that far, but when he looked up he could see no sign of the room from which they had fallen.

More worrying than that was the fact that there was no sign of Kidman. They had been right beside one another when the ground had caved in. Why wasn’t she there beside him?

“Kidman?” Joseph called out, and then, when there was no reply. “Sebastian!?”

There couldn’t be that much distance between the three of them, and unless something horrible had happened to both of his partners then at least one of them should have been close enough that they would have been able to hear him and give some sort of reply.

“Sebastian!?” he tried again. “Kidman!?”

Still nothing.

He tried to ignore the full body shiver that took hold of him at the thought of being alone again. His insides twisted painfully, but he forced himself to ignore the pains and the sense of panic that threatened to overwhelm him.

He would be fine. He just had to keep a hold on himself and find a way back to Sebastian and Kidman. Once he found the two of them then everything would be all right. Hell, all he needed was to make sure that Sebastian was fine, and then he was sure that the two of them would be able to make it out of this.

He found a small crack in the stone on the other side of the cavern, and pressed himself inside of it, pushing through and hoping that a way out would eventually present itself. It was a tight fit, but he managed to squeeze through, and when he did he found himself in another cavern that didn’t seem all that much better than the last.

There was another crack in stone though, and this one didn’t look as though it was going to be quite as uncomfortable as the last one had proved to be. He took a deep breath and was about to make his way forward when a loud, high pitched sound echoed through the caverns and made him stop in his track.

It was one of the strangest sounds that he had ever heard. No matter how hard he tried he couldn’t work out whether the sound had come from something organic or from a machine. It could have been a screech from one of those undead creature’s throats, he supposed, distorted and broken after echoing around the underground chambers. But it could just have easily been something else as well; a machine breaking and grinding to an abrupt halt; a knife screaming as it was sharpened.

Another sound came; quieter than the first, but no less disturbing, and Joseph found himself checking his pistol and counting how many bullets he had left; a surprisingly large amount considering how many he had fired during his and Sebastian’s earlier fight with the undead, but he had a sudden, irrational fear that it wasn’t going to be enough.

God, what the hell was making that sound? For that matter, what was causing any of this? There was something clearly very wrong with all of this, and Joseph was sick and tired of not having any answers whatsoever.

It was then that he remembered something that Connelly had said, right before they had all arrived at Beacon Mental Hospital.

“Maybe it’s the ghost of that doctor that went schizo and chopped up all those patients…”

When Connelly had brought the idea up in the patrol car Joseph had immediately dismissed it. For a start Joseph had never believed in ghosts. He tended to trust only in what he could see and hear and only believed in what made sense, but considering what he had been through over the last several hours, a ghost doctor didn’t seem all that implausible any more.

No, he told himself. That didn’t make any sense, and not just because of the ghost thing. He had also pointed out in the car that the story of the homicidal doctor wasn’t even based in fact. He and Sebastian hadn’t been assigned to the case, but a couple of their colleagues at the KCPD _had_ and what Joseph had heard was more than enough to make him glad that they hadn’t needed to go anywhere near it. Several patients of Beacon Mental Hospital had suddenly disappeared, seemingly out of thin air. The patients in question seemed to be some of those that had the absolute loosest grip on reality; the really bad cases. There had been a suspicion at one stage that a doctor might have had something to do with the disappearances. Through the rumour mill this somehow transformed into a tale of a murderous doctor, haunting the wards at night and picking off those that he deemed unfixable and beyond all hope, hacking them to pieces and then disposing of the remains.

The KCPD had never been able to solve the missing persons case, but the rumours had persisted, and when a doctor was found dead on the grounds of the hospital, having apparently committed suicide, the rumours only grew worse.

What the hell was Joseph even doing, entertaining an idea like the ghost doctor? It was no more than a stupid rumour. He knew that.

But at the same time it made about as much sense as anything else in this place had.

Joseph shuddered and then pressed on, trying not to let the sounds that he was hearing in the dark tunnels get to him. He could barely see anything though, and the further away he got from where he had first fallen down, the darker it became, and the less he could see.

The ground below him grew damp, until each of his footsteps was accompanied by a small splashing sound. An acrid, metallic tang started to fill the air, and still the tunnels grew darker.

He made his way through another small crack in the walls, and as his eyes adjusted to almost pitch blackness, he realised that he was in a much larger chamber than any of the caves that he had been in before. He couldn’t make out much, but on the far side of the chamber he thought he could see something pale, gently moving around as though in a breeze.

Wind, even the slightest amount, had to be a good sign. It meant that somewhere in all of this mess was a hole that lead back to the surface.

Joseph slowly made his way towards the pale cloth, whatever it was, carefully testing the ground with his feet before each step and hoping that neither the pale shape nor the ground beneath him would prove overly treacherous.

He judged himself to be about half way across the cavern when something let out an almighty screech. It was the same noise as before, and Joseph reached up to press both hands against his ears, afraid that the sound might deafen him otherwise.

The pale shape in front of him shifted and moved, rising up off the ground and becoming twice… no, three or four times the size that it had been before, towering over Joseph and assuming the form of a man, but one that was far larger than any man that Joseph had ever met.

Two long, monstrous arms, with more bone and flabby skin to them than flesh, emerged from the torso, one gnarled hand clutching a large, bloody butcher’s knife, the other a syringe that looked as though it had been crafted to stab and maim rather than for any medical purpose, the needle of it at least an inch thick with a tip that looked painfully blunt. Both the needle and the butcher’s knife were stained with blood.

The thing’s head was partially covered by a hood, which shifted and moved as it turned to face Joseph, revealing a face as pale as that of the stranger that Joseph had encountered in the hospital foyer, a surgical mask that was covered with the same fresh blood as the creature’s weapons, and a pair of piercing red eyes that fixed directly on Joseph.

The Doctor, (because that was what it had to be, wasn’t it? The ghost of the mad doctor that Connelly had talked about) started to float towards Joseph. Beneath the creature’s dirty white doctor’s scrubs there was no sign of legs, the fabric trailing off into tattered rags that drifted along the floor behind it.

Its long arms draped behind it as it moved, the knife and the tip of the needle scraping along the floor and creating the god-awful noise that Joseph had heard before. Joseph cringed as the volume of noise threatened to overwhelm him completely, and began retreating backwards away from the creature.

His back hit the cold, hard stone of the cavern, and he forced himself to move his hands away from his ears. He brought his pistol up with shaking hands, knowing that the odds of such a simple, mortal weapon being of any use against a supernatural creature like the one that he was up against were slim at best, but also knowing that he had no other way of defending himself against the Doctor.

He fired a few times, right at the doctor’s chest and face, but the bullets appeared to go straight through, and Joseph’s opponent didn’t stop or react to the attack at all.

Joseph cursed and ran along the length of the wall. The Doctor was close enough to him now that Joseph could smell the odour of blood and chemicals that accompanied it. The scraping noise changed a little, and then stopped altogether, and Joseph glanced behind himself to discover that the Doctor had raised the knife and was bringing it down in an arch that was slow, but which would nevertheless hit Joseph and possibly kill him if it he didn’t move fast enough.

Joseph ran as fast as he could, tucking his body into a ball beneath him and rolling out of the way of the knife. It was a close thing though, and Joseph could feel the wind from the blade as it passed overhead, missing him by inches.

The only good thing about the Doctor’s chasing him was that the ghost’s eyes didn’t just _appear_ to glow red; they were actually lighting up the area around them to a certain extent, and allowing Joseph to not only be able to actually see where he was going, but also to spot another hole in the wall not too far away from him.

“Oh thank god,” he breathed as he grew closer to the gap.

He ducked inside as quickly as he could. The hole was far too small for the ghost to fit in, but that didn’t seem to stop it. It let out a roar of frustration, its arms flailing at the small, claustrophobic tunnel in which Joseph now sheltered, the ghost’s knife clashing against the hard stone wall.

It slashed and stabbed at the crack, and Joseph jumped back in alarm as it managed to get the larger part of the monstrous syringe wedged into the same hole as Joseph. He kicked at the weapon, his foot managing to smash the glass of the syringe, and the Doctor let out a howl of rage in response to that, as though Joseph had somehow managed to injure it rather than just damage its weapon.

It began smashing and scrabbling at the wall with renewed vigour, and Joseph hurriedly began to crawl deeper into the crack, trying to get away from the ghost as fast as he possibly could.

Travelling through the tunnel proved to be hard work. This one was smaller than any of those that had lead him to the Doctor’s chamber, and at points he could barely fit. He couldn’t see where he was going, but after a while the screams of the Doctor started to fade behind him, and he could feel his heart gradually slowing down to a more normal pace.

The tunnel curved this way and that, and more than once it forked, but eventually Joseph thought he could see a pale light in the distance, and he began to hope that he had finally found a way out. As he grew closer he realised that the light was not so faint after all, and as he turned a corner he found himself, for the first time since he had fought the Doctor, in a part of the tunnel that was actually large enough that he could stand up comfortably, and he did so, taking a moment to stretch out the cricks and pains that had developed in his arms and neck.

A couple more turns and he was free of the cold stone of the tunnels completely. Instead he found himself in a slightly larger space, but he wasn’t sure that he was glad of the change. The ground here was uneven, and covered in a dark liquid that his nose would have been able to tell him was blood, even if his eyes could not.

At first he had thought that the ground itself was uneven, but upon closer inspection he discovered that the mounds he had assumed were rock or something similar were actually piles of flesh and gore. Had the ghost Doctor done this? There wasn’t time for him to work it out. What he needed right then was to get out of the area and find Sebastian once more.

There was another tunnel to one side, but considering that the tunnel seemed go back the way that they had come, and was as dark and covered in gore as the room in which he now stood, he opted instead to investigate the large iron door that took up most of the wall on one side of the room, the blood on the floor lapping gently at his shoes as he moved.

He had been hoping that there would be a handle, or lever, or some other way of opening the door, but there was nothing that he could see. It looked quite thick and heavy as well, but he was just about to kneel down and try to lift it up anyway when he heard the sound of something falling into one of the pools of blood behind him.

He whirled around, pistol at the ready, only to discover that Kidman had managed to find her way inside the room, and was now straightening up, heading towards Joseph slowly with her usual demeanour; just a little too polite to actually be called cold.

He had been through too much to trust eyesight alone however, and it took him a few moments, and a lot of arguing with himself internally, before he could bring himself to relax enough to lower the gun.

Sure, it looked like Kidman, but his brain and this place had been playing enough tricks on him already, and the fact that it was Kidman alone and there was no sign of Sebastian immediately made Joseph a little uncomfortable.

“Joseph,” Kidman said, her eyes only straying to the gun in his hands for a moment. “You’re all right.”

She sounded relieved.

Calm. Joseph told himself. You can be calm. This is just Kidman. She is, at least compared to everything else in here, safe.

He tucked the pistol back into place in his side holster; the weight of it pressing against left arm still strangely reassuring in a way that Kidman’s presence wasn’t.

“You too,” he muttered. “Thank god.”

“Any sign of Sebastian?” Kidman asked, and Joseph winced. He had been hoping that Kidman would know where his partner was.

“Nothing,” he admitted. “Maybe we can go back and look for him?”

After all, Kidman had seemed to take a different, undoubtedly safer and a lot less cramped route into the room, and Joseph knew his partner well enough to know that no matter how difficult it might be, Sebastian would insist on following them, and would somehow find a way down into the pit in which they had fallen, assuming of course that the collapsing floor hadn’t taken Sebastian with it as well.

“No!” Kidman replied, just a little too quickly and a lot too definitely for Joseph’s liking.

Kidman didn’t want to go back for Sebastian.

Why?

“I mean, let’s just out of here first,” Kidman said, her attempts to cover up her verbal fumble just as obvious as the slip itself. “Then we can worry about Sebastian.”

Joseph frowned at his fellow police officer, but if she noticed it then she chose not to acknowledge it.

He had always thought that there was something not right about Juli Kidman, and her current behaviour was not doing much to convince him otherwise. If she had done something to Sebastian then Joseph swore that he would…

“Can we open this gate?” Kidman asked, pointing to the door that Joseph had been investigating when she arrived.

“I doubt you and I are strong enough,” Joseph said, not taking his eyes off Kidman.

It was then that he heard something coming from the tunnel. It sounded like a mix of scraping noises and shrieks. He hoped that it wouldn’t turn out to be the Doctor, but even just the undead things that he and Sebastian had been fighting would be more dangerous than he would have preferred right at that moment.

Sebastian… If his sense of direction was working well, then the tunnel lead vaguely back in the direction that they had come from. Sebastian could be there, and whatever it was that was making that noise could be attacking him.

He steeled himself, knowing that if it was indeed the Doctor then there might be very little that he could do. He had to go though. He had to protect Sebastian.

“Joseph, watch yourself!” Kidman called out as he ran towards the dark, blood-soaked tunnel.

“I’ll be fine!” he shouted back to her. “Quick! Look around, see if there’s another way out.”

He hadn’t run far when the first of the undead things appeared in the tunnel in front of him, shards of broken glass sticking out from its skin and its limbs twisted in a way that should have meant it wasn’t able to go charging straight at him with the speed that it did.

He fired his gun twice in the direction of the creature, the first bullet aimed low and barely scraping the creature’s shoulder, but the second hit its target, slamming straight into the undead thing’s forehead and making it stumble and screech before falling to the ground.

Joseph could just see the shapes of two more of the undead coming towards them from the darkness of the tunnel, and beyond that, somewhere, his ears were starting to pick up a terrifyingly familiar screeching sound.

He couldn’t face the Doctor again, not with the other undead around, and not when he still had to look after Kidman. Speaking of which…

He fired another couple of shots, making the approaching undead stumble, before glancing over his shoulder to check on Kidman and her progress.

She didn’t seem to be doing anything. She was just standing there, staring at a blank patch of wall.

“We probably don’t have much time!” he shouted at her. “Look around for some way out of here!”

She didn’t show any indication of having heard him, but Joseph didn’t have time to push her right now, not when several undead things were all charging straight at him.

He managed to shoot one of the undead a couple of times in the chest, and it fell after letting out a strangled cry that sent shivers down Joseph’s back. In the meantime however the other one had managed to make it as far as Joseph, and reached out for him, grabbing his arm with fingers that seemed as strong as steel.

He struggled against it, trying to shake it off, and as he looked over towards the tunnel he saw another two undead, and realised with no small amount of fear that one of them was holding an axe. He stepped back, trying to pull his arm away from the undead clutching at him. The approaching enemy swung up with its axe, and Joseph managed to move back so that the blade lodged itself into the creature that was latched on to him. It finally let go of him with a shriek, and he ran back a few steps, taking shots at each of the undead as he went.

He could hear the scraping, screeching noise of the Doctor’s weapons, clear now for what they were. There was no doubt in his mind that the ghost was getting closer, and he still didn’t know how he was supposed to fight it.

He risked another glance back at Kidman. For some reason she still hadn’t moved.

“Kidman, what are you doing!?” Joseph screamed. “Come on, I could use some help.”

Joseph wondered if something was wrong with Kidman. After all, she was just standing there, staring at the wall in front of her and not reacting to Joseph’s cries at all.

Another wave of the undead came barrelling down the corridor, and there, behind them, was the ghost of the Doctor, it’s pale cloak brushing against the pools of blood below it and staining dark red at the tips.

It’s eyes, now as deep a red as the blood below it, turned brighter as it caught sight of Joseph. It let out an unholy shriek of rage and started charging towards Joseph. He brought his pistol up, hoping desperately that he would have more luck this time than the last, and let off a couple of shots.

They didn’t seem to do anything, just as they hadn’t the last time, but then, seemingly out of nowhere, another couple of gunshots rang out through the area. The ghost doctor let out another shriek, but this one sounded more as though it was more in pain than angry, and then it disappeared as though it had never been there.

Joseph shot another one of the less terrifying undead and then glanced over at Kidman, thinking that she had snapped out of whatever trance she had fallen into and had managed to help out, but no, she was still standing there.

Another one of the undead fell as it tried to run towards Joseph, and there, standing right behind it, was a sight that relieved Joseph more than anything else possibly could.

It was Sebastian. His partner was alive and unhurt, and still wielding the same wicked arsenal of weapons that he had used earlier.

Together they made short work of the remaining undead, and with no more on the way and no sign that the Doctor would be returning any time soon, it wasn’t long before it finally looked as though they were in the clear.

“Sebastian!” Kidman exclaimed, and Joseph couldn’t resist rolling his eyes.

Of course Kidman managed to snap out of that trance when the danger was actually over.

“Are you guys all right?” Sebastian asked, glancing between the two of them.

“We’re all right,” Joseph replied, already feeling better now that Sebastian was back and the ghost doctor had stopped chasing him. Part of him was still keeping an ear out for the sound of that scraping and rattling though. He was having a hard time believing that it was gone for good.

The pain in his torso and head hadn’t left either, but he was beginning to fear that it would be a constant as long as they were stuck in this hellhole. At least he couldn’t hear the buzzing or that incessant dripping right now.

Kidman moved to reassure Sebastian and then gestured towards the corner of the room, where another door had appeared. It was certainly not what Joseph had been expecting when he told her to find a way out. The door lay in between the crack that he had emerged from, and the larger steel door, so he was sure that he should have seen it when he had entered the room.

Had Kidman managed to summon a door out of thin air? Hell, it would hardly be the strangest thing to have happened since they had arrived in Beacon. Come to think of it, the smaller tunnel that he had travelled through seemed to have disappeared as well.

Oh well. They better make the most of the situation. The new door seemed a lot less intimidating than the last one. It was smaller, closer to the size of a regular door, and constructed of bars of rusted iron, almost like a prison cell.

“It looks like the door’s locked from the other side,” Kidman told them.

Perhaps she _had_ been doing something while Joseph had been fighting. Still, it was worrying that he hadn’t been able to see it. What other lies had his eyes been feeding him?

The three of them moved over to the two doors, and Joseph gestured to the larger, solid metal one. Sebastian had always been rather strong. Now that all three of them were there, perhaps they could…

“Sebastian,” he called to his partner, gesturing to the heavy iron door. “Maybe we can lift this enough for Kidman to go under and open it from the other side?”

The others seemed to silently agree on Joseph’s plan, and then he and Sebastian kneeled down, their knees and hands quickly becoming coated in the filth that covered the floor. Joseph silently promised himself that if they ever made it out of Beacon alive then he was going to spend a good hour or so under a steaming hot shower, just so that he could wash all the filth away.

“We’re counting on you,” Sebastian told the junior officer, with a slight nod of his head.

“All right,” Kidman replied, before ducking down between them. Together Sebastian and Joseph managed to lift the door the foot or so that Kidman needed to be able to roll under and get to the other side, giving her only a few seconds to roll free before they both released the door once more, letting it immediately slam shut.

It took Kidman a few seconds to get to the smaller door and get it open, a few valuable seconds during which Joseph was forced to re-evaluate his current condition.

He felt… better. A lot better. He had been covered in small cuts and bruises after fighting the undead and the ghost, and yet he could feel all of his smaller pains slowly floating away, as if they had never existed.

His clothes had been torn after crawling through the tunnels as well. He was sure that they had, but they seemed to be in perfectly fine condition now. Hell, they looked brand new.

Joseph glanced over at Sebastian and then back down at his own arm. He was sure that there had been quite a long cut there a few minutes ago, and now it was just gone.

Was it Sebastian’s presence? Was that what was doing this? He had always taken comfort in his partner, sure, but there was a difference between finding someone’s presence soothing and having Sebastian’s presence literally healing his wounds.

Oh well. He would take whatever benefits this world saw fit to give him, no matter how strange they were.

Kidman pushed the door open from her side, the old iron thing letting out a pained creak as it moved.

“Let’s get going,” Joseph said, and Kidman echoed his sentiment.

The three of them slowly continued on. Injured or no, Joseph could tell that the other two were just as tired as he was after what they had been through.

He kept his eyes on Kidman as they continued to walk. Her stillness back in the other room had concerned him, and while he was happy to shrug it off as just more of the weirdness of this place, he couldn’t quite shake off the feeling that something was very wrong.

Well, obviously something was very wrong. A lot of things were very wrong; this place, their situation, the pain in his body and the noises that had been pestering him from the back of his mind. Specifically, right now, he was sure that there was something very wrong with Juli Kidman.

Why hadn’t she appeared to move in the other room? Even when he had been in danger and calling for her help she had not moved to help him out. Come to think of it, he hadn’t seen her fight any of the undead things at all yet. Admittedly she had been trapped behind glass in the other room, but the realisation still set off alarm bells in his head.

How did they know that she was completely blameless in all this? After all, with the possible exception of her being trapped in the glass cage, she still seemed remarkably calm for someone that was trapped in an impossible nightmare.

He was vaguely aware of Sebastian saying something to the two of them; expressing his relief, and while at any other time Joseph would have taken a moment to share the sentiment, right then he felt that there were much more pressing matters that needed attending to.

The more that he thought about it, the more suspicious Juli Kidman’s role in all of this was beginning to appear.

“It’s odd though,” he said, partially thinking out loud and partially just wanting to see what Kidman’s reaction would be. “Why would they catch you instead of just killing you?”

After all, any time that the undead or one of the other monsters that stalked these halls had come after himself or Sebastian, it had been with the intention to kill, and while Joseph had experienced his fair share of strangeness, neither he nor Sebastian had been left alive and used as bait.

Because that’s what she had been, hadn’t it? Bait to bring Sebastian and Joseph down to the lower level of the room, where the undead things could attack them from all sides.

“Maybe he didn’t see me as a threat?” Kidman suggested.

Yeah, Joseph supposed that was possible, but…

“He?” Sebastian asked.

Oh. Sebastian had a point.

He? Perhaps Kidman had managed to catch a glimpse of the pale man in the hood, or whoever it was that was orchestrating all of this, or perhaps, and this seemed a lot more likely at this stage, terrifyingly so; perhaps Juli Kidman knew a lot more about their current situation than she was letting on.

Joseph was about to press Kidman; to ask her what else she knew, but before he could utter a single word he was suddenly overtaken by the same buzzing noise that had been the last thing he had heard before he had gone completely mad and tried to strangle his partner.

He writhed and clutched at his head, trying to get rid of the pain and the noise and having very little success. His vision was going blurry again, and he slammed his eyes shut, preferring total darkness to the incoherent and nauseating fog that he would see if he dared to open them again.

No. He couldn’t change again. He couldn’t risk hurting Sebastian and Kidman.

_Although maybe killing Kidman wouldn’t be such a bad idea. She was clearly lying about something_.

No. No, he couldn’t.

_But the pain would go away. He would be fine if he just let go…_


	5. Guilt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys. Thanks so much for sticking with me through this, and thank you for the nice comments that you've left me. They really helped while writing this.
> 
> This chapter is another long one, and it covers what IMO are some of Joseph's most interesting moments in the game. I gotta say though, while writing in game stuff is interesting enough, I kind of can't wait to get to the chapters that don't cover parts in the game. 
> 
> So anyway, let me know what you think, and hopefully you guys like this chapter and the ones to come.

* * *

 

Joseph was back in the replica of his office, because of course he was. He always seemed to end up back here one way or another. He was sure that something else had happened between him hearing that noise (his vision blurring, the pain disappearing, looking at the actions of his body as though he was an outsider and not actually in control of it at all…) and his ending up here again.

The office was not quite as welcoming as it had been the last time though, even taking into account the flood of liquid that had, to all intents and purposes, drowned him.

Gone was the gentle golden light streaming through the windows. Gone was the sense of peace and warmth that the office usually brought him. None of the lights inside the building were working, and the light that made its way through the blinds was a weak and strangely cold one that gave Joseph enough light to see by, but which left plenty of dark corners in their office; dark corners that now felt as though anything at all could be lurking within them.

The office looked as though it had been ransacked. Papers lay on the floor where they had no right to be, his own chair was overturned, and, as he made his way to Sebastian’s desk, heart heavy in his chest, he realised that his partner’s chair was covered in blood.

Lying all over Sebastian’s desk were the case files relating to the disappearance of his wife; Myra Hanson. She had never taken Sebastian’s name. No, she had always been far too independent for that. Sebastian had always needed Myra, but Joseph had a feeling that the woman would have managed just fine without her husband.

There was no sign of Sebastian. He hadn’t really expected him to be there. He had hoped, but never expected. It looked like this nightmare that they were both stuck in had found a way to separate the two of them once more.

He sighed, and took another look around the office. Could he just leave? The door was open this time and as far as he could see there was nothing to stop him from just walking out of their office and into the rest of the K.C.P.D. station. No matter what he found out there, at least he would be facing it on reasonably familiar turf.

He started to move towards the open doorway and suddenly found the pale, hooded man from earlier standing there, staring straight at him.

He reached for his pistol, but before he could do anything the man had moved to his side, and was gripping Joseph’s wrist with a grip as strong as iron.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you detective,” he said, his voice low and dangerous. “You know that it won’t work; not on me.”

“Who are you?” Joseph asked the stranger. He desperately needed answers; needed to know where he was and what was going on. The identity of this strange, ghost-like being seemed like as good a place as any.

The stranger seemed to contemplate the question for a second before frowning.

“The scientists; Jimenez and the rest of those lying cretins…” He should have sounded angry considering the frown on his face, but he muttered the words as though they didn’t affect him one way or the other. “They call me Ruvik. I suppose it’s as good a name as any other.”

Joseph recalled the muttering of the doctor in the security room.

_Can’t be real… Ruvik is…_

Ruvik is what exactly? He was apparently standing right in front of Joseph now, and Joseph wasn’t sure himself. Was Ruvik alive or just a ghost? Hell, was he even real?

“What are you doing here?” Joseph asked.

“I came to warn you,” the stranger said.

“Warn me?”

The stranger moved over to the pieces of paper on Sebastian’s desk, and picked up a photo of Myra. He hummed as though in thought, contemplated the photo for a few seconds, and then returned it to its place on Sebastian’s desk.

“She’s not who she says she is,” Ruvik told him.

Joseph somehow instinctively knew that the other man wasn’t talking about Myra. He watched the photo in Ruvik’s hand as it flickered and changed, ever so subtly morphing into the face of another female police officer that was just as familiar as Sebastian’s wife.

“Kidman?” Joseph asked.

Ruvik didn’t answer. He didn’t even nod; just placed the photo (now of Juli Kidman) back on the desk in front of him. The way that he looked at Joseph though; surely that was as much of a confirmation as any words could be.

“She will try to take him,” Ruvik told Joseph. “We can’t let that happen.”

Kidman was trying to take someone? Who? The answer came to him a moment later; Sebastian. Ruvik could only mean Sebastian.

Joseph thought of all the time that he had spent watching Juli Kidman; knowing that something was wrong with her and just needing to know what it was. Sure, he had always been rather jealous of her as well; jealous of the fact that he had to share Sebastian with another police officer.

But the thought that all of those fears and suspicions might actually be true was almost too much to handle. Juli Kidman was going to take Sebastian? What did that mean? Was she going to kidnap him?

“Is she behind all of this?” he asked Ruvik, moving to stand beside the pale man and look down at the photo where it lay on the desk. His eyes darted once more to the patches of blood on Sebastian’s chair, but he couldn’t pay attention to that right now. Those stains didn’t mean anything. They were just another trick that this place was playing on his mind.

“That’s giving her too much credit,” Ruvik said. “But she’s certainly not innocent.”

Ruvik suddenly turned, not moving so much as shifting in the air so that now he was facing Joseph. One of his hands pressed to Joseph’s forehead, the skin where Ruvik was touching him suddenly being subjected to a harsh, burning pain, as though Ruvik’s touch was fire.

“You need to stop her,” Ruvik said.

* * *

Joseph’s entire body ached. He was lying on the ground in a location that was completely unfamiliar and looked to be at least partially outside. Ignoring the various aches and the protests of his body, he pushed himself upright and tried to get his bearings.

This was unlike any area that he had been in up until now. The ground beneath him was no longer the cold tile of Beacon Mental Hospital, or the damp, bloody surrounds of the tunnels. Instead he felt and saw dirt and grass, and while it was a change from what he had seen so far it wasn’t necessarily a better one. The dirt was damp; the grass overgrown. When he looked out at the horizon he realised that they were on a cliff overlooking a dark and stormy sea, the waves below churning and crashing against the cliffs.

The sun had almost finished setting, and while he usually found sunsets just as beautiful as anyone else, this one was bathing the landscape in a hellish, red light that seemed to be the exact same colour as fresh blood. The shadows were dark, and deep, and what he could see was bathed in an eerie, reddish twilight thanks to the setting sun.

 “Are you all right?” a voice asked him. He looked up to find the always comforting and wonderfully familiar sight of his partner, the half-light from the sunset at his back.

Sebastian was here. That was… that was good. Seb would help. He could already feel all the aches and pains that seemed to cover him fading to the back of his mind.

“My head wouldn’t stop buzzing,” he told Sebastian. “It felt like it was about to crack open. But now it’s like… I’m starting to get used to it.”

“You seen Kidman?” Sebastian asked him.

“No… Next thing I knew I was here. I must’ve blacked out or… maybe I turned again…”

And then he was remembering, not all of it, but enough that he was immediately worried.

He could remember standing in his office with that strange, pale man. Ruvik, his mind supplied. Yes, he had talked with Ruvik and Ruvik had said…

Had said that he shouldn’t trust her. That she would take him…

That Juli Kidman would…

* * *

_He had found himself back in closed quarters that he could only assume were the tunnels beneath Beacon Mental Hospital, or at least connected to them. He had stumbled around for a while, trying to fight the fog that was taking over his brain once more, but his resistance had not lasted for long._

_He had found her. Kidman. She had stood right in front of him, staring at him with fear clear on her face, and then he had lost it, giving it to the sweet whisperings in the back of his mind._

_After all, Ruvik had been right. He could not let her take Sebastian._

_She wasn’t Kidman anymore though. She was a dark, twisted shadow of a thing; everything that he had feared she would turn out to be, and not at all the smart young woman that they he had worked with, laughed with…_

_“I know who you are!” he screamed, barely aware of what he was saying. “I’m not going to let you take him!”_

_It was like he was being controlled by something else entirely; something that wanted to tear Kidman to shreds with its bare hands, and he could think of no reason to resist it._

_He cornered Kidman, his hands closing around her neck, and he squeezed…_

* * *

Oh god no. What had he done?

Joseph gasped and tried to clear the memories from his mind. It was all so clouded and confusing, but he couldn’t have killed Kidman, could he? He felt like he was going to be sick.

He couldn’t exactly tell his partner what had happened though. They had been through a lot together, but Joseph wasn’t sure that Sebastian would be able to forgive Joseph if it turned out that he _had_ killed their junior partner.

He tried to focus. He needed a clear head if he and Sebastian were going to continue on. After all, he couldn’t remember everything that had happened just yet. If he remembered more and it turned out that he _had_ actually done something to Kidman, then he could worry about telling Sebastian later.

The undead things clamoured at a wooden gate that stood uncomfortably close to their current position, the sound snapping Joseph out of his current reverie.

“Inside,” Sebastian prompted, gesturing to a pair of ladders that lead up and away from the gate and the undead things behind it. “Let’s go.”

Joseph felt exhausted, but he managed to hobble towards safety, Sebastian right behind him. The pain was disappearing slowly, but it was still there, and it wasn’t just the pain in his stomach and his head anymore. He had grown used to those. He was tempted to tear off his shirt, half expecting that if he did he would find large, fresh scars marring the skin on his shoulders and arms. Something had attacked him. He was sure of it.

He and Sebastian jumped through the windows of a large, brick building just as he heard crashing and splintering as the gate behind them gave way beneath the onslaught of the creatures.

He needed something to defend himself with, but his pistol appeared to be missing. Right at that moment Joseph noticed an axe lying on the ground nearby and picked it up. It was hefty, with enough weight to it that it would probably do some serious damage to their undead foes should they get too close.

The sight of the axe in his hands made the pain in his shoulder flare up again, and it was at that moment that his brain decided to taunt him with more forgotten memories.

* * *

_He had managed to grab Kidman’s gun, and dismantled it with expert precision; his well-trained fingers making short work of the weapon and tossing its useless remains to one side. If Kidman thought that he could be taken out by something so weak and pathetic then she was wrong._

_A bright flash of light had then momentarily blinded Joseph, and he had screamed._

_The next time he saw Kidman she had been wielding an axe, and had let out a fierce yell as it she brought it down so that it embedded deep inside Joseph’s flesh._

_Whatever it was that was driving him would not let him be destroyed so easily however, and as Kidman disappeared, taking the axe with her, he simply yelled and continued on after her, the desire to tear her limb from limb stronger than ever._

_How dare she try to hurt him? The lying, scheming, insufferable bitch!_

_“I knew you weren’t one of us!” he screamed._

_He was going to murder her._

_Another burst of light, followed by another sharp burst of pain. Somehow she had managed to sneak up on him. Whatever was helping him, was making him strong and relentless, was dulling his thought processes._

_There was no room for anything but hate, but he didn’t need anything else._

_“Fuck you Kidman!” he roared, before beginning the search again._

_There was only one thing on his mind right at that moment, and that was finding Kidman and making sure she suffered in the most horrible way imaginable._

* * *

Joseph shuddered and tried to put the memory to the back of his mind. At least he knew that he hadn’t killed Kidman, at least not with the initial strangling attempt that had so scared him, but his memories weren’t much comfort. Who could have known that he had so much hate buried inside of him?

Despite the fact that their environment was a completely different one, the bomb-rigged door that he soon found himself standing in front of looked eerily familiar. The door that this one was hooked up to was a lot older and probably weaker, and the bomb itself was a lot more complicated and sophisticated, but it had clearly been imagined by the same mind, and constructed by the same hands.

“Another one?” Joseph mused.

At that moment a loud crash, like breaking glass erupted behind him, and he glanced back to find that half the room was suddenly on fire. As he watched another glass bottle sailed through one of the windows in the dilapidated building and then crashed into a thousand pieces on the floor, spraying flaming oil all around it.

Their undead enemies were throwing Molotov cocktails now? Jesus, these things were clearly a lot more intelligent than the zombies and other undead creatures that Joseph had seen in movies.

Within seconds they had started to climb through the walls as well, ignoring the flames as they spread over the floor and licked their way up the walls.

“Get that thing open!” Sebastian called out as he reloaded a rather powerful looking shotgun.

“I’m working on it,” Joseph said, already ducking down to further examine the device. “Just give me a little time.”

Joseph tried to ignore the sounds of Sebastian fighting as he worked. His worrying for his partner’s safety would not help them. He just needed to trust that Sebastian would be able to take care of their undead enemies, just as Sebastian was trusting Joseph to get the door open as swiftly as possible.

The device was complicated, but Joseph had the benefit of having defused one such bomb already. He knew how the creator’s mind worked; could guess what traps and fail-safes he might install, and it was only the work of a couple of minutes to get it open; a couple of minutes during which the sounds of screaming and gunshots and explosions continually reached his ears from where Sebastian was fighting off what sounded like hordes of undead behind him.

He and Sebastian ran through the door as soon as it was open and Joseph slammed it shut behind him, hoping that it would keep the undead at bay. They turned a corner, ran down a set of stairs and then they came face to face with another door and another bomb.

He and his partner both cursed, but Joseph immediately got down on one knee and started to work again, while Sebastian covered his back, weapons at the ready. This bomb was even more complicated than the last though, almost overwhelming so, and the sounds of gunfire and screaming (mostly from the undead things as they were set on fire or shot, but also occasionally from Sebastian) were not making it easy to concentrate.

“There’s twice as many of them now!” Sebastian called to him. Joseph dared not look over his shoulder to check, not when he was using both hands to rewire a fuse that would surely blow the entire building to kingdom come if he didn’t deal with it correctly.

“Well if you’ve got time to complain…” he shouted back.

He continued to work, and the device finally gave way with a click, the door swinging open.

Only then did Joseph allow himself to look behind him and see the half dozen or so undead that were swarming behind them. Sebastian was standing right behind him, gun at the ready, protecting Joseph and the door with a ferocity that made the undead things look almost tame by comparison.

“Sebastian!” Joseph called out. “Let’s go. Looks like we’re out.”

Sebastian nodded and together the two of them ran, Sebastian firing back at the undead that continued to follow them.

They passed through an open double door, this one made of heavy, thick wood that looked as though it would be able to withstand the onslaught of the undead for at least a few minutes.

Wordlessly he and Sebastian moved to take a single door each. It took all of their weight, but together they managed to close the door before any undead could make it through, Sebastian pushing a heavy metal bar that fell into place behind it with an earth-shattering ‘thump’.

For the first time Joseph was able to get a good look at their surroundings. There were buildings; old, brick things that had crumbled and broken down with age. Here and there vines had attempted to reclaim the place, but were little more than dark, shrivelled things.

“Let’s rest for a minute,” Sebastian suggested. “We can’t keep going at this pace.”

No. They couldn’t. But they couldn’t stop there; not in this strange, foreboding place, not while the undead continued to hammer at the door behind them, and not while Joseph was still in danger of turning and attacking Sebastian at any second.

“I think we’ve got to get out of this place as fast as we can,” he told Sebastian, stumbling a little over his words. For a moment he contemplated telling Sebastian what had happened with Kidman, but no… He couldn’t do that.

“What about the tower there?” Sebastian said, pointing out a ruined structure not too far in the distance. Joseph hadn’t noticed it until Sebastian had pointed towards it. In fact, he was reasonably sure that it hadn’t existed, at least for him, until Sebastian had mentioned it. Oh well. He chalked it up as just another example of this place being weird; he was almost starting to get used to it.

“We might be able to get a lay of the land,” Sebastian added.

Something thumped loudly and suddenly against the door behind them, causing them to both jump. Joseph turned around, axe at the ready should anything attempt to make it through.

“Anything’s got to be better than staying here,” Sebastian admitted.

There wasn’t a large distance between themselves and the tower, but the area was a maze of broken buildings, collapsed stairs and gaping holes that would see them dropping into the dark, seemingly bottomless chasm below them should they take a wrong step.

Sebastian set off, weapon in hand, looking much more confident than Joseph was feeling at that moment.

“Let’s be careful,” he warned Sebastian, glancing around at all of the dark shadows and hidden nooks around them. “It could be full of them.”

Joseph turned out to be right, and he hated it. The undead things seemed to be waiting around every corner, ready to attack the two of them. He did what he could, fending off the creatures with his axe and missing his pistol the entire time. Sebastian seemed to have picked up a veritable arsenal in his travels, but even all of the explosives and weaponry that he carried seemed to be barely enough to stave off the hoard.

And then, just as Joseph thought they might be starting to get everything under control, a rain of heavy, harpoon like spears came raining down onto the ground, right in front of Joseph. If he had been moving any faster than he would have been pierced by half a dozen of them. He glanced over to the tower, where he could just make out one of the undead things in the gloom, operating the mechanism that had sent the rain of deathly spears down at himself and his partner.

“Get to cover!” he warned Sebastian. “They’re shooting from above.”

He had nothing that would be able to take the undead and its lethal weapon down, but somewhere along the line Sebastian had picked up a sniper rifle, and Joseph covered him as he lined up a shot and took the undead and its terrible weapon down. Joseph had not been able to see as clearly as Sebastian could in the gloom, but whatever his partner had done saw the creature and its contraption falling to the ground in a fiery blaze.

It wasn’t the only one though. Another undead soon opened up with a contraption that worked the same as the last, sending the same lethal rain of harpoons down on himself and Sebastian, and the undead kept coming from all corners. It was all that Joseph could do to fight the creatures off long enough for Sebastian to take them down.

Before long he lost sight of Sebastian completely. The things were coming at him from all directions, and all that stood between him and falling to his death were a few rickety pieces of wood that someone had done their best to turn into a bridge.

He lashed out with his axe to kill the creature in front of him, but he didn’t have any time to prepare before another one of the things was slamming into his back, making him trip and then…

Oh god, he was falling off the wooden walkway and down into the chasm below. He managed to grab the flimsy bridge with one hand before he fell completely, but his grip was precarious, and he knew that it would only be a matter of time before one of the things stomped down on his hand or he would run out of strength and lose his grip.

He let out a cry of alarm. He wasn’t sure whether Sebastian would be able to hear him, and for one strange moment, as he hung there, he wondered whether he actually wanted him to.

Sebastian was probably surrounded by the things as well. He probably needed to concentrate on fighting. Joseph couldn’t distract him, but nevertheless he found his voice betraying him, calling out that he was in trouble.

He was slipping. He couldn’t hold on any longer, and rather than fearing death, he found that in those final, few moments, he was ready to embrace it.

And then Sebastian was leaning down, wrapping his hand around Joseph’s arm and pulling him back up to safety. Sebastian’s other hand reached down to hoist him up by the waist, and before long Joseph was back up on top of the rickety wooden bridge.

“Are you all right?” Sebastian asked him.

Joseph managed to let out a strangled noise, caught part way between shock, embarrassment and what he was afraid could only be disappointment, but there wasn’t any more time to chat or focus on recovering, not when the undead were continuing to come after them.

Together they eventually managed to get rid of all of the zombie-like beings and their weapons, including the lethal harpoon guns, although Joseph was pretty sure that nearly all of it had been thanks to Sebastian. He had barely helped at all.

“Nothing should stand in the way of getting to the tower now,” Joseph commented, trying to focus on moving forward, rather than on the dark shadows all around them, or the fact that he was becoming more of a burden than a helping hand as far as Sebastian was concerned.

Their peace was short lived however.

One second Joseph was following Sebastian as they headed towards the tower, the next a door was sliding shut, separating the two of them with Sebastian trapped inside a small area and Joseph stuck outside of it.

He hammered on the door and was about to call out to his partner when the sound of a chainsaw starting up drowned out anything he might have wanted to say.

A chainsaw? That could not be good. He began to pry at the door, trying to find a way to open it, and had no luck. There was no sign of any lock or lever or any other way to get it open again, and he whirled around, hoping that he might be able to find some other way to reunite with Sebastian, or at least a good perch from which he could observe the battle and perhaps lend a hand.

As soon as he turned around however he found himself coming face to face with Ruvik once more. All of the colour seemed to leech out of the world, the sounds of the chainsaw and grunts of exhaustion (hopefully not of pain) from Sebastian fading away until there was nothing in the world but himself and Ruvik, standing on a flat plain in the middle of the darkness.

“What are you doing here?” Joseph screamed at him. He needed to get back. He needed to help Sebastian, and the last time he could remember seeing the creep in front of him was right before he had gone insane and attacked Kidman. “Why won’t you leave us alone?”

Ruvik looked up and grinned at Joseph.

“I wanted to talk to you,” he said simply.

“And you had to put Sebastian in danger to do that?”

Ruvik chuckled softly to himself, Joseph being able to see the action more than hear it.

“I do things because I want to,” Ruvik replied. “I don’t _have_ to do anything. You would be wise to remember that Detective.”

Ruvik walked slowly towards Joseph. The detective hefted his axe with both hands, waited until his opponent was only a foot or so away from him, and then swung at the pale, hooded man, but Ruvik seemed to shimmer and flicker out of existence right in front of him, appearing again right by Joseph’s side, completely uninjured.

“Oh Joseph,” Ruvik purred. “I thought you were smarter than that.”

He turned his head, fixing Joseph with cold eyes so pale that Joseph couldn’t tell what colour they were. The scent of burning flesh was almost overwhelming, and he tried to shrink away, but found himself completely unable to move. Ruvik reached up to clutch Joseph’s shoulder with one cold, clammy hand.

“He would die for you,” Ruvik said, and it only took a moment for Joseph to realise that the other man was talking about Sebastian. The sounds of the fight began to reach his ears again; the roar of the chainsaw, and a distant echo that sounded far too much like Sebastian crying out in pain for Joseph to be comfortable.

“Perhaps he still will,” Ruvik continued.

“No,” Joseph muttered. When Ruvik finally stepped away from him he gasped in relief. “He can’t… He shouldn’t… I’m not…”

“Not worth it,” Ruvik finished for him. Suddenly the sound from the fight disappeared once more, leaving them in a silence that was all-consuming. Joseph couldn’t even hear the sound of his own breathing. It was quiet enough that he should have been able to, but there was just… nothing; silence, total and all-encompassing.

“Does he know that?” Ruvik asked. “Does he know how you hunger for him? What you would do to him if you had the chance?”

No. Of course not. He had never had the chance to tell Sebastian. Between his partner’s getting married and then _being_ married and then the ensuing tragedies there had never been an appropriate moment.

No. He was lying to himself there. There had been a couple of moments when the confession seemed to be on the tip of his tongue, but he could never bring himself to actually say it. No matter how well Sebastian took the revelation Joseph couldn’t imagine a series of events following such a confession that did not result in the eventual destruction of their partnership.

“No, I don’t think he does,” Ruvik continued, despite the fact that Joseph hadn’t said a word. “After all, he still trusts you. What do you think he would do if you told him?”

Yes. What would happen? Joseph had worried about that often enough too. Nothing good.

“What would he do if he found out that you killed Kidman? He would hate you, wouldn’t he?”

The memories flashed at the forefront of Joseph’s mind once more; his hands around Kidman’s neck, the blood lust, the rage, the desire to tear her to pieces…

“No, Seb wouldn’t hate me,” he muttered, not believing a word of it. “He would understand.”

“Seb?” Ruvik asked, a mocking grin on his face. He shook his head once more and began to circle Joseph as a shark might its prey.

“You can lie to yourself all you want,” Ruvik told him. “You can lie to your dear, sweet ‘Seb’ as well if you must, but you and I will always know the truth. And while Sebastian might prove himself somewhat useful and competent during all of this, you will remain what you have always been; a sad, broken narcissist with no regard for others; a danger to everyone you care for.”

“No. That’s not who I am.”

“You should probably distance yourself from Sebastian Castellanos’ as soon as possible,” Ruvik suggested, and Joseph tried to block out the part of him that thought that Ruvik was making a lot of sense. “After all, we wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to him.”

Joseph had lost track of Ruvik thanks to all of his circling, but when Ruvik next spoke his voice sounded as though it was right next to Joseph’s ear once more.

“Would we?” he whispered, before appearing right in front of Joseph once again.

Joseph saw another flash of himself trying to tear Kidman to pieces. She had seemed so dark and threatening then, but now when he thought back on that moment, or thought about Kidman at all, all he saw was a perfectly normal, disturbingly fragile human being. One whose life…

Who he had managed to…

Oh god. He really was going to be sick, and not just because of the guilt and the memories. It had returned again; that painful lurch inside of his stomach, and somewhere in the distance he could hear the slow, heavy sound of thick liquid dripping and falling to the ground.

“You’re not good for him Joseph,” Ruvik said, continuing to taunt him. “You’re not good for anyone.”

Ruvik grinned one last time and then disappeared without a trace, taking the darkness with him and leaving Joseph alone in the same spot in which he had been standing when Ruvik had first appeared.

He heard a loud scraping sound behind him and whirled around to discover that the door between himself and Sebastian had opened once more. He grit his teeth and cursed Ruvik’s existence beneath his breath, but even he could tell that there wasn’t really any fire or real threat behind the words.

He could worry about the strange pale man later though. For now he had a partner to save.

His hands tightened around his axe, and he ran into the small courtyard in which Sebastian had been caught, ready to take on whatever it was that had attacked Sebastian, and stopped short when he saw that Sebastian did not only not require saving, but was standing triumphantly over the body of a large man, easily twice as large as Sebastian. A puddle of fluid was already leaking out of the corpse. Sebastian meanwhile, did not appear to have a scratch on him.

The other man did look exhausted though, and Joseph couldn’t blame him. They had been through a lot, and thanks to his own weakness and (hopefully temporary) insanity, it had been up to Sebastian to shoulder most of the burden. Well, they could not continue like this; Joseph would not allow it.

He moved ahead of Sebastian, taking the lead for once.

The inside of the tower was no more welcoming than the outside, full of dark corners and old, chipped and stained concrete. It took Joseph a moment to realise that the dark shape in the centre of the room was an elevator. Considering the old, rustic nature of the place the technology came as a bit of a surprise.

The machine itself was not working though, and let out a series of rhythmic, metallic groans as it tried unsuccessfully to work. Joseph followed the shaft further up with his eyes, and saw that the elevator car was stuck in place, undoubtedly caught on something.

“The elevator is stopped at the top,” he noted, glancing back to make sure that Sebastian had followed him. “Let’s look for another way up.”

There was a set of stairs nearby, and so he headed towards them, glancing back every couple of seconds to make sure that his partner was still following closely behind. They travelled up several flights of stairs and eventually reached the elevator car.

Joseph approached the door cautiously, afraid that the body that was jammed in the elevator door, stopping it from closing and moving properly, might come back to life at any moment. He grimaced and contemplated the axe in his hands, definitely not looking forward to the grizzly task ahead of him.

Before he could do anything however Sebastian had approached the body and dropped a match on it. The body caught fire as swiftly as kindling, and burned into ash just as fast. Joseph blinked back his surprise. Just what the hell sort of matches was Sebastian carrying?

Oh well. It got the body out of the way, and before long they were both in the elevator car, heading towards the top of the tower. They were both quiet as they headed up, leaving Joseph alone to his thoughts, and to the memories that plagued him, of turning, and his resultant fight with Kidman.

When they stepped out at the top of the tower Joseph noted that the sun had still not dipped below the horizon, meaning the world was still painted in the same red hues as before. He sighed, and then turned to face Sebastian.

“Do you think Kidman is okay?” he asked.

He didn’t know what he expected Sebastian to say. As far as Joseph knew he himself was in a much better position to guess Kidman’s fate than his partner. He needed Sebastian to comfort him though; to give him hope that maybe, just maybe, Joseph hadn’t completely screwed everything up.

“I don’t like that they used her as bait,” Sebastian replied. Not exactly the answer that Joseph had been hoping for.

“Almost like someone’s toying with us,” Sebastian continued.

Well, that was certainly true, although not particularly helpful. Judging by the few appearances Ruvik had made so far, he was definitely toying with them, and enjoying it far too much.

Joseph stopped as the pain is his stomach and head suddenly flared to an extreme, unbearable level of intensity. He tried not to let it show, but found himself coughing several times as the pain twisted its way up and into his throat.

“Hang in there,” Sebastian said, having noticed the coughing, and the fact that Joseph had stopped walking. “Just a little further.”

How could Sebastian possibly know that? For all they knew nothing lay ahead of them but miles and miles more of these godawful monsters, and even ‘just a little further’ might be too far if Joseph turned.

Ruvik’s words had hit a little too close to home for him to just ignore them. He really wasn’t good for Sebastian. After all, he had already possibly killed Kidman. What if… what if he turned again and did the same thing to Sebastian? He would never be able to forgive himself. The current strength of the pain inside him made him fear that the possibility was a very real one.

Joseph tried to smile at his partner, knowing that it was a weak gesture that Sebastian could easily see through, before the two of them set off again, Sebastian walking slowly in front of Joseph along an old stone bridge.

The twisting pain inside of Joseph seemed to grow worse with every single step that he took, and he tried to focus instead on the sight of Sebastian by his side, or on the strange scenery in which they now stood.

The old stone construction continued, and in the distance Joseph could see a few larger shapes that he thought must be buildings of some sort. The bridge itself did not look particularly safe, entire chunks of stone and the supports below having fallen into the pitch black chasm below.

The bridge itself seemed to be bordered by thick, black cast iron bars that put Joseph in mind of an old-fashioned prison cell. Strips of cloth, which might have once been a variety of bright colours, but which were now faded to pale browns and creams, and occasionally stained the deep red of blood, waved slowly backwards and forwards in a faint breeze.

There was something vaguely familiar about all of this; the metal bars and the bandage-like scraps of fabric, as though they had been torn from somewhere in the deepest depths of Joseph’s subconscious. It all felt like some half-remembered dream that had disappeared from his mind two seconds after waking.

A loud scream echoed throughout the area, and Joseph looked ahead to see two undead dragging an overweight man between them. As he watched they placed the man’s head in a guillotine, and pulled the rope. The blade fell swiftly, instantly and cleanly removing the man’s head from his shoulders.

The whole thing only took a couple of seconds.

Joseph took a quick assessment of the situation and noted that there were indeed only the two undead. They were both only the size of regular human beings, and neither of them appeared to have any decent sort of weapon except for the guillotine itself. There didn’t seem to be any sort of traps or preparations in the area surrounding them either.

This was a nice change from the danger and the chaos that he and Sebastian had fought through so far. If he had to fight through more undead then these two weren’t so bad really.

He hefted his axe and turned to Sebastian.

“There are only two,” he pointed out to his partner. “We can take them.”

For some reason Sebastian did not look so convinced, but Joseph started to cross the bridge without him anyway, trusting that his partner would catch up. He was sure that he could take the two of them by himself anyway. Hell, they probably weren’t even aware that he was coming towards them, their attention still on the larger man that they had just decapitated.

“No!” Sebastian called out behind him. “That’s not…”

Joseph turned back to check on Sebastian for just a moment. It was during that moment that he felt his foot catch on something. Looking back down at his foot Joseph discovered that he was standing on some sort of trip wire.

No. What the fuck was that!? He was sure that the wire had not been there a moment before. He had been paying enough attention to his surroundings that he would have noticed something like that. He was sure of it.

What the fuck was going on? It was almost as though the wire had appeared out of nowhere as soon as Sebastian had…

And then the bridge exploded behind him, chunks of heavy rock falling everywhere, one particularly large one slamming against his back and knocking him to the ground.

Pain wracked his entire body. He tried to move, but he couldn’t even manage to lift an arm. He blinked a couple of times, trying to clear the blurriness from his vision, but with no luck. He could distantly hear someone calling out, but he couldn’t make out any words.

This was… this was just like back then. His arms reaching out for Sebastian’s neck without his permission. No… Kidman’s neck? Perhaps both.

His body wouldn’t respond to any sort of command that he gave it. What had happened to reduce him to this again? Had it been that same sweet whispering, or was it something else? He couldn’t seem to remember any more.

He was vaguely aware of strong arms lifting him up and dragging him over the ground. Was it Sebastian? No, Sebastian would be more gentle than this. Sebastian was kind and warm and everything that Joseph didn’t deserve. These hands were rough, digging into his skin and probably leaving hard, bruising marks; an almost insignificant amount of pain compared to that which wracked the rest of him.

His legs dragged behind him, and he briefly considered that he should probably attempt to escape the clutches of whoever it was that was holding onto him, but moving was just so hard.

He blinked a couple more times and managed to raise his head enough that he could see where the two strangers were dragging him. There was… was that a guillotine ahead of them?

He remembered then; the two undead executing the fat man. Oh, so that’s what was happening? These men were dragging him towards the guillotine, where they would no doubt place his head on the chopping block, pull the lever and put an end to his miserable life.

That didn’t sound so bad really; it would be a quick death, relatively painless, and then he wouldn’t have to worry about the strange, messed up world in which he had found himself. There would be no more running, no more fighting, and even better than that, no more worrying that he was going to lose control over himself and try to hurt Sebastian again.

Oh god, that actually sounding _really_ appealing right now, and he started to feel glad that he hadn’t managed to fight the hold of the two men holding him. He could distantly hear someone shouting, but the words didn’t make any sense, and the noise sounded like it came from so far away…

The sound of a gunshot, loud and clear, snapped him partway out of the daze he had fallen into. The grip on one of his arms disappeared, the body of one of the undead falling onto the ground beside him.

The other undead continued on, heedless of the death of his companion, dragging Joseph along behind him like a sack of potatoes. They were so close to the guillotine now; only a few more feet to go and then this would all be over.

Another shot rang out, and Joseph’s second handler fell to the ground, immediately letting go of his prisoner. Joseph let out a weak groan as fell the remaining couple of feet. For a couple of seconds he just lay there, enjoying the cool ground and hating the fact that the easy way out had been denied to him.

“Are you okay!?”

Sebastian’s voice was clear enough this time that Joseph couldn’t really ignore it, especially not when his partner sounded so worried about him.

Joseph stumbled to his feet and located Sebastian, still on the other side of the broken bridge, sniper rifle in his hands.

“I’m fine,” Joseph told him. “No need to worry.”

His reassurances sounded unconvincing, even to his own ears. Surely there was no way that Sebastian, who always seemed to be able to read him perfectly, would be convinced. Oh well, he had almost died after all. It was perfectly normal to be a little out of sorts after something like that, wasn’t it?

Sebastian looked, if not relieved, then at least placated.

Joseph adjusted the set of the glasses on his face, and then scanned their surroundings. A quick check of the broken bridge revealed that there was no way that Sebastian was going to be able to use that to cross. That whole incident still confused Joseph. That trip wire…

Oh well. There was no point in him worrying about it now. Now he needed to focus on helping Sebastian; on getting his partner across the chasm that lay between them. There was a small enough gap between the platform on which Sebastian was currently standing and Joseph’s part of the structure, so he searched around for something to bridge the gap and help Sebastian across.

At least he had been granted a reprieve from the pain in his torso and the buzzing in his ears. It helped him to think straight; about everything that had happened, about the threat that he posed to Sebastian, about those god-awful things that had been attacking them, about how they were going to make it out of this mess. For now he needed to help Sebastian, but once he was done with that, well…

After a few moments his eyes landed on a long wooden platform resting not too far from the guillotine. It was only the work of a few seconds to pick it up and move it over to the gap, laying it down so that Sebastian could use it to walk over.

Joseph waited until Sebastian had made it to his side of the gap, and then looked his partner in the eye. His mind was made up. It would be better, especially for Sebastian, if Joseph was to just… disappear.

“You should have just let them,” Joseph told Sebastian.

“Huh?”

Joseph took advantage of his partner’s moment of confusion to grab Sebastian’s pistol from his side. He immediately brought it up to the side of his head. There could be no confusion now.

“What the hell!?” Sebastian cried out.

Joseph had expected perhaps a little bit of shock, but surely Sebastian would understand. He had to make him understand. His own mind was made up. He was going to pull the trigger, but first he had to make sure that Sebastian knew why he was doing this.

“It’s just a matter of time,” Joseph told him.

There was a moment of silence during which Joseph and Sebastian just looked at one another. It was hard to meet that gaze. Sebastian was furious for some reason. Oh, why couldn’t he just understand? Joseph couldn’t turn into that monster again. He couldn’t risk hurting Sebastian or anyone else. He just needed all of this to end, before he… before he could…

“It’s better this way…” Joseph said, his finger beginning to tighten its hold on the trigger.

Joseph had meant to say more. He had at least intended to say goodbye, but before another word could escape his mouth Sebastian was throwing himself at Joseph, pushing the smaller man to the ground and shoving the gun out of Joseph’s hand before Joseph could do a single thing to defend himself.

Sebastian grabbed the gun from off the ground and then got back to his feet.

Joseph had expected sorrow. He had been ready for Sebastian to plead, to beg Joseph not to do it, but the look on Sebastian’s face when he had tackled Joseph was nothing short of absolute fury.

Joseph sat up, his gaze finding Sebastian’s silhouette and settling on it. Apparently Sebastian wasn’t going to make this easy for him.

“What the hell?” Sebastian muttered.

Joseph didn’t know what to say.

Sebastian had positioned himself so that Joseph’s back was to him. Joseph could feel the other man’s eyes burning a hole is his back, but he could not turn around and meet Sebastian’s eyes; not yet.

 _Why couldn’t you just let me?_ he found himself thinking. _I’m trying to protect you. Please Sebastian. I don’t want to hurt you._

He heard the slow, steady sound of Sebastian’s footsteps as he walked away from Joseph, and he sighed, before forcing himself to get to his feet once more.

The two of them continued on in silence, at least until they both heard the sound of the undead heading towards the two of them once more. Joseph looked over to discover that the hoard had managed to find their way to the top of the tower, and cursed. The gap in the bridge wasn’t going to stop them either; not when he himself had left them an easy way to get across. It seemed that there would be no rest for the two of them.

There was a gate not too far ahead, one that appeared to be operated by an old-fashioned chain and crank, and Joseph rushed over to it, hoping that he might be able to get it open before the undead arrived.

“Cover me,” Joseph called out to Sebastian.

Once again he was forced to turn his back on Sebastian as his partner fought off the undead monsters just behind him. He didn’t like it, but he had lost his axe when the bridge had exploded and he had a feeling that Sebastian wouldn’t be trusting him with a firearm any time soon. The least he could do was get this door open.

Sure enough Sebastian, strong, brave fighter that he was, managed to fight off the undead long enough for Joseph to get the door open. The two of them ran through, and the heavy wooden door slammed shut behind them. Hopefully this one would be heavy enough to keep the undead away for good.

“Joseph,” Sebastian called out softly as soon as they were in relative safety once more. “Are you… all right?”

He wasn’t. He was so very far from all right. His stomach hurt, his head hurt, and he was still afraid that he was going to turn at any second; but he knew what Sebastian was asking; was he going to die or try to commit suicide again any time soon?

No. No he wasn’t. Sebastian had made it perfectly clear that it was not an option.

“I…” Joseph began. “I… Yeah…”

He wanted to say more, as he always did; to either thank Sebastian or scream at him or try to explain. He didn’t know what he wanted to say first though, and so he said nothing, just continued on after his partner in silence, and tried his hardest to pretend that he wasn’t falling apart on the inside.


	6. Losing Ourselves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First off I'd like to say sorry for taking so long to update this. I had a non-fanfic writing deadline that I needed to focus on. But I promise I haven't forgotten this story! Now that the deadline is over and done with I'm hoping to get back to updating this regularly.
> 
> I'd also like to say thanks to those of you that have left me kind comments over the last few weeks. They really make my day. An especially large thank you goes out to rinnannon on tumblr. This chapter is for you. :)

CHAPTER SIX: Losing Ourselves

Their path brought them to an area that was surprisingly peaceful, mostly free of blood and gore, and relatively undamaged, even if the buildings were a little old and overgrown. There was no sign of the undead; no sign of anyone at all for that matter. What appeared to be a marketplace had been completely abandoned. Some stalls still had their wares out on display, as though the entire settlement had been forced to relocate in a hurry.

Joseph mentioned it to his partner. Sebastian was scrounging around the area for whatever supplies he could find. Joseph just continued along behind him, trying to ignore the pain in his head and stomach and the voices that continued to whisper to him from the back of his mind. While the quiet was a nice change it made it harder for Joseph to distract himself from the voices, and from fearful thoughts of what he had done and what he might still do.

 _Just stay focused on Sebastian_ , he told himself.  _Everything will be fine as long as Sebastian is here and as long as you don’t turn again._

They came to the foot of a statue; some sort of angel with her head in her hand, as though the current state of the world had broken her heart. Joseph could, unfortunately, relate.

The marketplace eventually lead to a cemetery, one in which tall, imposing tombstones and mausoleums seemed to dominate and tower over a sparse scattering of more normal sized burial sites. Joseph started to look around, but had to stop midway through scanning the area as his body was taken over by another small coughing fit.

“Where do you suppose we are?” Sebastian asked him.

“More like when,” Joseph muttered in reply. “This architecture seems straight out of the middle ages.”

“Yeah, but there’s electricity,” Sebastian replied. “Elevators. This place can’t be real…”

Joseph had been thinking the same thing. At least he had been when his mind was clear enough to spare some thought for their surroundings. In a way it was good to know that Sebastian was seeing at least some of the same nonsensical insanity as Joseph himself.

“It’s like… jumbled up memories,” Joseph said, thinking of the times that he had ended up in nightmare versions of their office, or Beacon Mental Hospital.

So whose memories were they in now? He had never seen this place before. At least, he didn’t think that he had.

They only made it several more steps before Joseph was overtaken by another, much worse coughing fit. He stumbled over to the nearest statue and leaned against it as the coughing wracked his entire body.

He could feel that pain all throughout his chest and head again, like shards of glass or coils of barbed wire were trying to tear him apart from the inside. He knew he was coughing up blood, but he was using his hands to steady himself and couldn’t catch them this time. Several drops fell from his mouth to the dusty ground below, and Joseph caught the look of worry on Sebastian’s face as his partner spotted them. 

From somewhere nearby one of the undead let out a strangled cry, and the next thing Joseph knew Sebastian was wrapping an arm around his shoulders and guiding him to one side of the path.

“Let’s hide out in here for a minute,” Sebastian said as he helped Joseph stumble towards a small, broken-down old building. 

Joseph wanted to tell Sebastian to leave him, to just worry about himself for once in his fucking life, but Sebastian’s grip; one hand holding onto Joseph’s where it was slung over Sebastian’s shoulder, the other gripping tightly at Joseph’s waist; was surprisingly firm, almost fierce, and Joseph had a feeling that telling the other man to leave him behind would just cause his grip to grow even tighter.

As soon as they had made it inside the safety of the building, Joseph shrugged off Sebastian’s hold and picked a spot against a nearby wall, sliding down to the ground with his back pressed against it.

He had been holding off the coughing and the darkness that accompanied it as well as he could, but now he allowed himself a moment of weakness, letting whatever it was take hold of him, giving himself a moment of peace, a few seconds during which he could just stop fighting the darkness overtaking his body. 

Another round of coughing took over him, sending a spasm of pain from his stomach up through his lungs and throat, making him gasp for breath and wishing, not for the first time, that Sebastian had just let him bring it to a swift, relatively painless end. At this rate it would not be long before he was too exhausted to fight anymore, and then he would turn...

On the other side of the room Sebastian pulled out a flask and shook it around, as though testing to see whether there was any alcohol left in it. Joseph’s immediate reaction when he caught sight of the flask was fear. It was foolish really. The flask might not have contained anything more harmful than water, but even if Sebastian was drinking hard liquor, the thought of his partner consuming a couple of mouthfuls of whiskey should have been the least of his worries when they were surrounded by so much violence and insanity.

It wasn’t.

Joseph had spent too long worrying over his partner’s unhealthy relationship with alcohol for the sight of the flask to be anything more or less than discomforting. He had spent too many nights wondering whether he would see his partner at work the next day, or whether he would instead get a call from the hospital telling him that Sebastian had crashed his car or had been in some other sort of accident thanks to the alcohol, or, and these were the worst fears, that Sebastian had decided upon a more permanent method of making the pain go away.

“Is this what it was like Seb?” Joseph asked his partner. “After the accident?”

When Sebastian’s drinking problem had started. When Joseph had been most afraid that one way or another, he was going to lose his partner, not because Kidman or someone else took Sebastian away from him, but because Sebastian decided that not existing anymore was just easier than dealing with the mess his life had turned into.

“Well I never put a gun to my head,” Sebastian snapped by way of reply.

Joseph frowned. What the hell right did Sebastian have to be angry with him? Sure, Joseph had tried to kill himself, but because it was the right thing to do; because surely it would be better than turning into that thing again and hurting someone...

“No, of course not,” Joseph snapped back before he could stop himself. “Just quietly sank into a bottle.”

His words sounded rather more sad and a lot less angry than he had intended. He guessed that he just didn’t have the energy for anger right now. Still, it didn’t stop the emotion itself from coiling around his heart. Sebastian had to know how hard it was for Joseph to watch him sink into self-destruction like he had, right?

“We can’t all be perfect,” Sebastian said, and Joseph scoffed at that. Perfect? Who the hell was Sebastian talking about? Because it couldn’t have been Joseph. He was about as far from perfect as it was possible to be, especially since coming to Beacon.

“It never affected my work,” Sebastian continued, mistaking the reason for Joseph’s scoffing.

What Joseph’s partner said was true though. Sebastian had continued to be one hell of a good detective. Even when he had started to turn up to work hungover or still slightly drunk, his breath reeking of alcohol and his eyes bloodshot from more than a lack of sleep, he had continued to successfully close more than his fair share of cases. God, Joseph had been so scared by the end, and yet no-one else had been able to see how bad things had grown, which was why...

Sebastian had moved closer to Joseph as he spoke, until he was standing right in front of him, towering over Joseph where he was still curled against the wall.

“But hey,” Sebastian said. “You read the I.A. report.”

Oh hell. Were they really doing this  _now_?

Sebastian’s drinking problem had grown dangerous. Joseph had tried comforting the other man, had pleaded with him to stop, to try something else, had yelled and begged and cried himself to sleep more than once on Sebastian’s behalf, and none of it had worked.

So, he had tried a different approach. He had reported his partner to the K.C.P.D.’s internal affairs department for substance abuse. He hadn’t even tried to keep the fact that he was the one to lodge the complaint a secret from his partner. What was the point? By that stage he was pretty much the only person close enough to Sebastian to know how bad his alcohol abuse had grown.

They hadn’t even talked about it until now. At the time Sebastian had avoided him for a few days, and Joseph had been able to tell that the other man was angry about it, but he finally began to lay off the alcohol, at least a little, and they had, by mutual unspoken agreement, never brought up the I.A. investigation, until now at any rate.

What could Joseph possibly say now to make it at all okay? He wasn’t sorry for it. Hell, if it meant stopping Sebastian from nearly drowning himself in liquor then Joseph would do it again in a heartbeat. Joseph had done what he had because he had been worried about him; because despite everything that had happened, Joseph still cared about him. Surely Sebastian could see that?

“You know I didn’t report you because I was worried about your work, Sebastian,” Joseph said, because he did know, didn’t he? He must. Hell, Joseph would gladly see Sebastian disgraced and kicked out of the K.C.P.D. if it meant keeping him  _safe_.

Sebastian scoffed at that, and the words that he spoke next broke Joseph’s heart.

“What else is there?” Sebastian said, sounding as though he actually meant it.

And Joseph really didn’t know how to respond to that. Sebastian had lost his daughter, and then his wife. They both worked so hard that they didn’t really have much in the way of a social life outside of work.

So yeah, what  _did_  Sebastian have left now? Joseph? Wouldn’t that sound like the greatest joke in the world? Come on Sebastian, you still have your suicidal wreck of a partner. Not all is lost!

Technically he was _only_ Sebastian’s partner as well. To presume anything else after everything had happened seemed more than a little selfish. Sure, Joseph wanted more, but he wasn’t sure that Sebastian even considered him a friend anymore.

Still, he had to say  _something_  and he was about to open his mouth and let it all out, to tell Sebastian that he still had Joseph, still would no matter how angry Sebastian might be with him, or how fucked up their current situation might be, but one of the undead outside chose that moment to let out a loud screech, pulling both of them from the private little world that they had managed to seclude themselves in.

“We don’t have time for this,” Sebastian said, leaning down and grabbing Joseph’s arm, helping him to his feet whether Joseph wanted him to or not. “I need my partner here.”

And that was apparently that as far as Sebastian was concerned. Argument over. No winners.

He was right though. Joseph needed to concentrate. He had to put the pain and the dark whispers out of his mind and concentrate on protecting Sebastian.

“I’m counting on you,” Sebastian told him, and that was somehow exactly what Joseph needed to hear.

He took a deep breath and willed the pain and the dark whisperings away. If Sebastian needed him, then Joseph was sure as hell going to find a way to keep the darkness at bay and help him as much as possible.

He made a promise to himself then that he would protect Sebastian with his life if need be. After all, at this stage it didn’t really matter much whether Joseph lived or died, as long as he didn’t turn again. It was clear that Sebastian wasn’t going to just stand by and let Joseph take the easy way out, so he might as well give his all to protect the man that he loved.

Joseph looked around the room that they had taken shelter in, taking note of his surroundings in a way that he hadn’t when he had first stumbled in. It was an old building, built of rotting wood rather the sturdy stone of the other buildings they had passed through. He caught sight of more of those strips of fabric as well, hanging from the rafters and drifting slowly in some sort of breeze. In one corner of the room sat a half-butchered corpse, but he dismissed that as having any sort of relevance. More gore; more butchery that he could have done without seeing, and none of it ever seemed to exist for any purpose other than to unsettle the two of them.

He could have sworn that he heard the sound of music coming from somewhere in the distance as well, and it took him a moment to place the song as Clare de Lune, the song that Sebastian and his wife Myra had chosen for their first dance as husband and wife.

He couldn’t possibly be hearing that though, and he concluded that it was just his mind playing tricks on him once more. He focused his attention instead on one of building’s walls, where someone had scrawled a series of seemingly random writings and drawings.

He moved closer, and as he did he started to reconsider his initial assessment of the writings as random. Someone, whether completely sane or not, had taken the time and effort to inscribe these words on the wall, and Joseph wanted to make sure that they didn’t ignore any potential advantage that this world saw fit to give them.

He reached into his pocket, and was pleased when he discovered that the small notebook and pen that he usually kept there were in place, right where he wanted them to be, and still in reasonably good condition despite everything he had gone through. He opened his notebook and began copying the writing on the wall. Half of it seemed like nonsense at that moment, but you never knew, and some of it seemed uncomfortably familiar.

 _Mustn’t let her take him…_  one passage said.  _Mustn’t let us take him either. We are so close to giving in now. So close…_

Joseph wondered whether the writing had been left there by someone else that had been trapped in this god-awful place; another soul that had been tormented by the pain and the dark, tempting whispers. He wondered too if they had given in, and then, when he realized he was probably only copying a load of nonsense, closed the book sharply.

“Are you finished?” he heard Sebastian ask him. 

“Yeah,” he said, tucking the book back into his pocket and looking back towards the church. “Let’s go.”

Sebastian had started to move before Joseph had even finished replying, and Joseph fell back into line behind him as they headed into the cemetery.

A scream came from somewhere up ahead of them. That in itself wasn’t surprising, but the fact that the scream sounded as though it had come from a living human and not one of the undead that had been plaguing them  _was_.

The stones of the cemetery blocked their view of the path ahead, but a ladder stood resting against a large stone plinth not too far ahead of them. If Joseph climbed it then he should be able to get a good view of the cemetery and the land beyond, and hopefully spot whoever it was that had screamed and what manner of trouble they had gotten themselves into.

“Hold on a minute,” Joseph told his partner. “Let me climb up here and see if I can get a look ahead.”

Joseph could feel Sebastian’s eyes burning into his back as he climbed the ladder. He had almost made it to the top when one of the rungs broke beneath his foot. He recovered in time to pull himself up onto the top of the pillar, just as half of the ladder fell to the ground behind him. 

“You all right?” Sebastian called up after him.

“Yeah,” Joseph replied.

The corpse of one of the undead things lay at the top, splattered with blood, and Joseph prodded it experimentally with his boot to make sure that it wasn’t about to stand back up and try to attack him. There was no response, so he moved to scouting the area that lay ahead.

The cemetery stretched out ahead of them, a maze of old stone walls and elaborate crypts. The sound of gunfire quickly focused Joseph’s attention towards the church that lay beyond the cemetery, and he quickly noticed the pair of figures that were running towards it.

He recognized one of them, and immediately felt as though an enormous weight had lifted from his shoulders and his conscience. She might be in trouble now, and Joseph doubted that she would be particularly happy to see him, but at least he hadn’t actually been responsible for Juli Kidman’s death. Whatever else had happened both during and since their fight, at least she had managed to get away from him in one piece.

“Hey, that’s Kidman!” he called out, and then thinking out loud, “who’s that she’s with?”

The other figure remained a mystery. He could vaguely make out another, pale figure that appeared to be rather hunched over. It was too short to be Ruvik, which came as a relief, but unfortunately he couldn’t tell much else.

He found himself desperately wishing that he had a way of getting a closer look at the two figures. His foot bumped once more against the corpse by his feet, and he glanced back down at it. It held a sniper rifle clutched tightly in one of his hands.

That was extremely convenient, almost frighteningly so. Why hadn’t he noticed the gun before now? Oh well. He was sick of nothing making any sense, and wasn’t going to question things when, for once, the weirdness of this place worked in his favor.

He leaned down, and tried to tug the weapon away from the dead man. His grip was tight, as though even in death he didn’t want Joseph stealing it from him, and Joseph had to use almost all of his strength to tear it away from the dead thing’s hands.

He gave the weapon a quick check, making sure that the scope at least still functioned, before standing up and triumphantly holding up his find to show to Sebastian.

“Look what I found,” he said. “It seems to be in working condition. Go on ahead and I’ll cover you.”

Another quick check through the scope revealed that it was too late to check on Kidman and the stranger. They had already disappeared inside the relative safety of the church. Well, he would just have to use the sniper rifle for its intended purpose. Sebastian was undoubtedly going to come up against more of their undead enemies, and Joseph could probably protect him better from his new sniper perch than he could at Sebastian’s side.

Sebastian headed into the maze of the cemetery, a wrought iron door slamming shut behind him as he did. Joseph cursed softly and then forced himself to pay attention to Sebastian once more.

There was the sound of a gunshot, and a bullet whizzed past Sebastian’s head. Joseph looked over to where another one of the undead things was standing, a hundred meters or so from his own position, perched on the cemetery’s walls at a similar height to Joseph, and also holding a sniper rifle within its hands.

“Find cover!” Joseph called out to his partner. “They’re shooting.”

Sebastian ducked behind the nearest tombstone as Joseph lined up the shot. The undead with the sniper rifle responded to his hiding by throwing a Molotov cocktail at Sebastian, the flames splashing all over the back of the tombstones and coming dangerously close to enveloping Joseph’s partner.

He could not let that distract him though. He held his breath and pulled the trigger, only letting himself breathe once more when the creature fell off its perch, clearly dead, it’s head a bloody mess thanks to Joseph and his sniper rifle.

The undead with the rifle was only the first of many. As Sebastian moved deeper into the cemetery several more of the creatures appeared. Joseph did what he could, shooting any of the undead that grew too close to Sebastian. Yes, this was good. This had given him a purpose once more, a reason to continue to fight and resist the dark voices in the back of his mind. Sure, Sebastian was taking out just as many of the creatures as Joseph was, but he was doing his part. He was protecting Sebastian. He was keeping him safe.

Sebastian turned a corner, and Joseph cursed beneath his breath. He could no longer see his partner, or protect him from whatever danger he might be in.

He gripped the sniper rifle tightly and sized up the various plinths and stone walls around him, picked one that seemed to lead to where Sebastian had travelled and then jumped.

They continued on in this manner for a while; Joseph following Sebastian as closely as he could on the cemetery walls and taking out any opponents that he could spot with the sniper rifle, while Sebastian continued to fight at close quarters, using whatever methods necessary to make sure that their opponents did not get up again.

Joseph’s current position gave him an excellent view of the cemetery as well. He called out to Sebastian and let him know when he was going in the right direction. If he followed his current path then before long Sebastian would make it to the church, at least as long as nothing unexpected happened.

And then there was a scream, and a crashing sound. Joseph hadn’t seen what had happened, being too focused on taking down an undead that had tried to rush at Sebastian from behind, but suddenly there was a monstrous undead hurtling towards Sebastian. It was easily twice the height of a normal man, with oddly proportioned limbs and huge, bulky muscles, and it was dragging a club behind it that was roughly the size of a fallen tree.

Joseph immediately brought his sniper rifle up and took aim at the creature’s head. It moved extremely quickly considering its size, but Joseph managed to get a couple of shots off. He was sure that they had both hit, one of them even landing square in the middle of the creature’s head, but it did not seem to be enough to stop it.

By now though he was used to this world and its strange rules, so it didn’t surprise him so much as annoy him, and he reloaded the sniper rifle, riled up now and ready to fire as many bullets as it would take to stop this latest enemy and make sure that it did not hurt his partner.

Sebastian was fighting it as well, moving backwards away from the creature and firing shell after shell of shotgun ammo directly into the creature’s massive bulk.

They turned a corner, and Joseph cursed as he lost sight of them. He hoisted the sniper rifle over his shoulder, lined himself up and then jumped onto one of the stone walls in front of him, doing his best to follow Sebastian and the monster as they continued to do battle and hoping that he would be able to get another shot lined up before it was too late.

He had to protect Sebastian. It was all that he was good for anymore.

Joseph heard a loud scream of pain, and felt his heart skip a couple of beats at the thought that it might be Sebastian that he had heard screaming. No, that giant could not have killed his partner… But what if it had?

The walls and stone pillars of the cemetery finally brought Joseph to a point where he could see Sebastian and the giant once more, and he breathed a sigh of relief. The cry of pain had not come from Sebastian, but from the giant, which now lay dead at his partner’s feet.

Sebastian glanced up and spared a moment to give Joseph a smile, but there was no time to celebrate. Another one of the giants charged at Sebastian, seemingly out of nowhere. This one did not have the same enormous club as its brethren, but swung two, large, meaty fists at Sebastian as though it meant to pummel him to death.

Sebastian ran, shooting back at the giant with his shotgun as he did. Joseph took shots whenever he could, but the creature was fast; fast enough that getting a proper shot in was difficult.

Before long the giant had managed to back Sebastian into a corner. It reached towards Joseph’s partner, heedless of the sniper bullet that Joseph had just sent slamming into its skull, and picked Sebastian up off the ground by the other man’s head. Joseph tried to pull the trigger again, but the chamber was empty. He cursed and tried to reload, but his fingers were shaking and he almost dropped the precious single bullet he had left.

If he didn’t do something soon then Sebastian would…

No. He couldn’t think like that. He forced himself to breath steady and then lined up the shot once more, firing the trigger before he could second guess himself. The second giant fell to the ground with a cry, releasing Sebastian as it did.

It wasn’t quite dead yet, but Sebastian soon changed that, lifting the gun in his hands and shooting into the giant’s head a couple of times at point blank range.

Joseph let out a sigh of relief. His hands were still shaking, and he forced himself to be calm for a few moments. He didn’t know how many more fights there would be before this was all over, but this one, at least, was done. Now he just needed to make sure he was as in control of himself for the rest of them.

He checked the sniper rifle, only to realize that he was now out of bullets completely. He cursed and placed the gun down on top of the wall. There was no sense in lugging the thing around if he couldn’t use it, especially not when his partner had many more useful weapons at hand.

He scouted ahead of them, and realized that the gate that lead to the church had been completely blocked by large pieces of ruined stone. He didn’t know whether that had been the case before the fight, or whether one of the giants or the smaller undead had caused it, but it was definitely a problem now.

“I’ll look for another route,” Joseph called down to Sebastian, knowing that his own position made scouting a lot easier for him than it would be for his partner. “Let’s meet up by the horse statue, there.”

He pointed to a spot not too far from where Sebastian was currently standing. Two stone horses stood there, reared back on their hind legs as those in defense of whatever tomb they guarded.

Joseph took a few moments to scout the area ahead and realized there was not going to be any easy way out of the maze-like cemetery. He supposed they could always climb a wall or try to break one down, but it would be better to work out the details once he and Sebastian were reunited.

He jumped down from the wall and approached the two horse statues slowly. There was something familiar about them. Joseph had only been inspecting the statues for a couple of seconds when Sebastian appeared alongside him.

“Wait,” Joseph murmured, mostly to himself. “There was something about a horse in that house back there. Let me see what I wrote.”

He was sure of it. He pulled his notebook back out and flicked back to where he had starting copying down the seemingly nonsensical scribblings on the wall. He had thought that they were just crazy ramblings, but maybe not. Maybe there was something more to them.

 _The left horse it brays,_  the writing in his notebook told him. He was suddenly glad that he had taken the time to copy as much of it down as he had.

  _I shook its hand and it showed me the way,_  another line said, one that Joseph could remember being placed directly below the first on the wall. He took another look at the statue right in front of him, the left horse that the scrawling on the wall had mentioned. There was something odd about the leg closest to him; a break in the stone that didn’t match up with the rest of the statue.

He ran his hands over the stone, felt it move a little beneath his touch, and then pulled it closer towards the horse’s body, shaking its hand just as the writing had suggested.

The large stone coffin in front of them shuddered and then pulled back, revealing a deep, dark hole in the ground almost as large as the coffin itself. Both he and Sebastian leaned forward to check the hole, but it was dark enough and deep enough that Joseph at least couldn’t see a thing.

“I guess we go down,” Sebastian murmured.

“I guess so,” Joseph agreed. He wasn’t exactly looking forward to it, but it wasn’t as though they had any better prospects. Besides, someone had gone through a lot of effort to hide this pit. Joseph’s mind wasn’t so far gone that it had lost its curiosity. He wanted to know what lay down there in the dark.

They jumped into the darkness together. It seemed as though the physics of this world were trying to behave themselves for once, and it was only a moment before Joseph’s feet found themselves once more on steady ground.

It was dark, as he had expected, but not so dark that he could not see. He had however, and this was becoming frustratingly common, lost sight of Sebastian.

For a moment he started to panic. What would happen if he and Sebastian lost one another again? Even if he couldn’t completely trust himself around Sebastian, Joseph knew that he would be completely lost if he were kept away from him for any length of time.

Joseph could just make out a doorway on one side of the pit that he had fallen into, and he stumbled towards it, using his hands to see in the almost total darkness as much as his eyes. The path opened up as he continued, but there was still no sign of any light. Joseph could feel his pulse speed up, and the pains in his stomach and neck intensify as he continued.

God damn it; this was not helping. He needed to find Sebastian again. He needed his partner’s help.

“Sebastian!?” he called out, ashamed to hear how desperate he now sounded.

“Sebastian, where are you!?”

There was no reply.

Joseph continued to travel through the darkness. He had been hoping that his eyes would adjust, and the way ahead of him would grow clearer as he continued, but he had no such luck. It was as though there was no light at all down in the god-forsaken pit.

Consequently he didn’t know that the object was in front of him until he ran straight into it. It gave way as he hit it, and then swung back towards him. Joseph heard a creaking sound, as of a chain swinging backwards and forwards somewhere above him.

Joseph reached out in front of him to feel whatever it was he had run into. He felt a rough fabric, like old hessian, and behind that, something warm and solid; lumps that might be a knee or an elbow, and which squirmed beneath his touch.

The hanging form in front of him let out a muffled cry. Joseph couldn’t make out any words, but the being in the sack sounded too distressed and far too aware to be one of the cruel undead that he and Sebastian had been fighting.

“Hold on,” Joseph said as he felt around the circumference of the sack. “I’m going to get you out of there.”

Joseph’s hands wrapped around a thick piece of rope somewhere around the clothed form’s center. He gave it an experimental tug, and then jumped back as a loud, sharp sound, like metal on metal, came from right in front of him.

He reached out and pressed one hand to the hessian-covered form, and immediately pulled back as something warm and damp spread out beneath his hands. He could smell the tangy, metallic scent of blood, and felt his stomach revolt in response. Whatever it was that had lain within the sack had fallen completely still, and Joseph recoiled in horror.

He had only been trying to help. He had not known that something so horrific would come just from touching the form in front of him. How could he?

 _You knew_ … a voice at the back of his mind taunted him.  _Don’t pretend that you didn’t. You destroy everything that you touch Joseph. Why should this be any different?_

He hurried along as fast as he dared, wiping the blood from his hand off on the wall as he went and trying not to think about what had just happened.

Eventually Joseph started to make out a small amount of light coming from the tunnel in front of him. By the time he reached the next, larger chamber, there was enough light that he could at least make out the shape of a man on the other side of the room. He was a wearing a familiar tan trench-coat, and he had his back to Joseph.

“Sebastian?” Joseph called out, hoping that his partner was all right.

Something wasn’t right. The other man was not turning around to look at Joseph, and it took Joseph a second to remember that Sebastian had not been wearing his trench coat when he had last seen the other man.

Ah. So this was another hallucination, was it? It was either that or he had imagined the events in the graveyard. He really couldn’t tell anymore.

“You’re not really here, are you?” Joseph asked as he moved to stand beside Sebastian, or whatever it was that was currently trying to pass as him.

Sebastian shrugged, and turned so that his back was facing Joseph once more, carefully orchestrating his movements so that Joseph never really got a good look at his face.

“I think the more important question Joseph, is; ‘what the hell do you think you’re doing?’” ‘Sebastian’ said.

“What?” Joseph muttered, the question catching him off guard.

“Wouldn’t everything be better if you were to just lay down and die?”

There was no malice in the other man words. He was simply stating a thought that had been bugging Joseph for quite a while now.

“I’m protecting you,” Joseph said.

“And how the hell are you supposed to protect someone from themselves?” Sebastian asked him. “For that matter, how are you supposed to protect someone from _yourself_?”

Joseph didn’t know.

The fake Sebastian paused for a moment to remove a flask from inside of his trench coat and take a quick swig from it, still moving in a careful manner that meant Joseph never got to see his partner’s face. He was beginning to get the feeling that once again, something was  _very_  wrong about the whole situation.

“No lies this time partner,” Sebastian told him once he had finished drinking. “What are you really hoping to get out of all of this?”

“What? I just want the two of us to escape from… whatever all of this is!”

“Are you sure?”

And then Sebastian turned around.

His eyes were covered by a blindfold, and blood seeped out from beneath the black fabric and ran down his cheeks, creating long tear-like streaks all the way to his chin and down his neck.

* * *

Joseph’s eyes flew open. He had only been able to see Sebastian’s bloodied and blind-folded face for a couple of seconds, but the image was burned into his mind, and his first thought was to scan the area around him for the real Sebastian.

He soon discovered that the other man was standing right beside him, apparently none the worse for wear. They were both standing in the middle of a lift. Flesh and dismembered organs were draped from the ceiling like some sort of macabre up attempt at decorating the steel bars that surrounded them and curved up and over their heads. He had no idea how he had gotten there, but if Sebastian thought his reappearance odd then he said nothing about it.

Had any of that happened? Had it all been inside Joseph’s mind? Or had Sebastian imagined that some version of Joseph had accompanied him up until that moment, just as Joseph had previously imagined Sebastian’s presence when he needed him?

Oh, what was the point of even speculating? What was real and what wasn’t seemed to make no difference anymore. It was all real enough to Joseph and yet none of it seemed to mean anything at all. He had lost Sebastian and yet he was still standing right beside him.

Joseph moved a little closer to the other man, just close enough that his arm brushed against that of the other man and he could assure himself that this Sebastian was real; or at least real enough that Joseph could touch him without the other man disappearing.

The lift took them up, and as the doors creaked opened Joseph followed blindly behind Sebastian. After all, he was completely clueless as to how the two of them had reached their current location, and was content to take his cues from his partner. They soon reached what looked to be an incredibly twisted laboratory. He and Sebastian took a few moments to gawk at the various dismembered body parts and notes that were displayed all over the place.

Something that commanded both of their attentions was a series of notes and drawings detailing the creation of the twin giants that he and Sebastian had fought earlier. They described how the two had started out as a perfectly normal set of twins, but with the addition of a serum created by whoever it was that ran this laboratory, the twins had grown to an enormous size.

Joseph wondered if he should feel bad about the twins’ fate now that he knew how they had started their lives, but he couldn’t bring himself to care that much, not when he and Sebastian were still in plenty of trouble, and not when there was so much else about this place that was still so messed up.

Like the notes that he found detailing a similar experiment on a dog. There was no drawings this time, but Joseph couldn’t stop himself from imagining what the same serum that had created the monsters in the cemetery might do if administered to a perfectly normal dog. He pictured the gross, distended snout, the bulky unnatural flesh, and the enormous size and ravenous hunger that such a beast might possess, before turning his back on the reports and finding Sebastian once more.

He tried to shake off all thoughts of the monstrous hound, but he found that he couldn’t, not even when he and Sebastian continued on, away from the laboratory, Sebastian leading the way and Joseph following close behind.

They hadn’t been walking for long when Joseph started to hear a deep, rumbling noise, almost like the breathing of a monstrous beast. He knew that he was being ridiculous, but that was honestly what it sounded like to his fear-addled brain, especially after they had just passed through such a disturbing laboratory.

They turned another corner, and what Joseph saw in front of him made him stop short. He hadn’t imagined the cage, or the large chains that were keeping the creature in place, but the sleeping animal in front of him looked almost  _exactly_  like the monstrous hound he had imagined when reading the reports.

It was much larger than any hound had any right to be; larger than a wolf, or a lion. It was hard to tell exactly how large it was with it curled up in sleep, but Joseph had a feeling that if it got to its feet then it would be almost as tall as himself or Sebastian. Its fur had all but disappeared, leaving only mangy, boil-covered skin that made it look horribly diseased. Its snout had been twisted almost inside out, leaving two crooked rows of fangs that looked more like they belonged on some sort of hideous sea creature than on any sort of canine. A series of stakes had pierced the flesh of the creature’s back, and had been left there to form a grotesque ridge down the creature’s back. Had they come from someone’s attempt to kill the beast, or were they just another product of the depraved minds that had created the creature in the first place?

The beast snorted and snuffled in its sleep, but it did not seem to have noticed Sebastian and Joseph just yet. The two detectives glanced at one another, and came to a silent agreement to try and sneak past as quietly as possible. They did not want this creature waking up, for fear that the bars and chains would not be enough to keep the hound from trying to tear them apart.

They crept around the cage, to the doorway on the other side of the room, and made their way through a long, twisting tunnel. The next door lead them outside, and Joseph might have been glad to finally be back out in the open air if it wasn’t for the fact that the sky had turned even darker than before. There were still patches of red by the horizon, but for the most part the sky had been stained a deep black. He could not make out any stars.

At least the church was nearby. They just had to travel through a small grassy area and find a way through a couple of tall, wrought iron gates and then they would be there.

They were just approaching the first gate when a series of crashes and creaking noises coming from the tunnel right behind them stopped them both in their tracks. When Joseph glanced over at his partner he could tell that Sebastian was thinking the same thing that he was. The hound had awoken, and from the sound of it had found a way out of its cage.

Joseph headed straight for the wrought iron gate, examining the lock and wondering what the odds were that the hound would not be coming straight for them. Judging by how little luck the two of them had been having of late, then probably not all that good.

“Can you get it open?” Sebastian asked him, already grabbing for one of his many weapons.

Joseph did not answer, just grabbed for the tools at his belt, which unlike his pistol were still there. Thank god for that. A couple of picks made short work of the lock.

It clicked open just as one of the brick walls behind them gave way. The creature came barreling towards them, its mouth opening in a strangled cry that sounded nothing like the sounds a healthy dog would make. Joseph and Sebastian pushed open the gate and ran into the garden beyond, the beast following directly after them.

Joseph turned around to face the creature. He brought his hands up to defend himself, but didn’t have a chance to do anything at all before the hound was barreling into him, its enormous bulk knocking him to the ground. He hit the ground hard; not hard enough that he would have been rendered unconscious or severely injured, and yet when he tried to move he found that he couldn’t.

Joseph groaned and shut his eyes, and when he opened them again he found that he was back in the replica of his and Sebastian’s office.

“Here again?” Joseph groaned.

“Guess you got knocked out again, huh?”

Joseph glanced over to find that Sebastian had joined him in the fake office this time. He was under no delusions that this was the real Sebastian. It couldn’t be. For one, he was wearing his trench coat again. For another, Joseph was at least half way sure that the real Sebastian, if such a thing even existed anymore, was back by the church, fighting the monstrous hound.

Sebastian pulled a flask of liquor from somewhere within the folds of his coat and took a couple of swigs.

“Great job of protecting me by the way,” Joseph’s partner sniped once he had finished drinking.

“Please be quiet,” Joseph snapped at the other man. If he closed his eyes he could hear the creature growling, and the sound of the real Sebastian’s shotgun as he tried to fight the beast off.

“You know,” Sebastian said, completely ignoring Joseph’s request. “I don’t remember you getting hurt this much when I wasn’t around.”

“I still got knocked unconscious. A lot.”

“Yeah, but did you actually get hurt this much? It’s like some part of me wants you to be in danger or something.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“No. Sebastian is my partner,” Joseph said, ignoring that the version of Sebastian that was standing right next to him possibly had as much claim to being real in this place as the one that was currently fighting the monstrous hound.

“He wouldn’t want me to be in danger,” Joseph insisted.

“Whatever you say,” Sebastian replied. Despite his words he did not actually sound as though he was agreeing with Joseph at all.

“Every time I’m in danger he does everything he can to protect me,” Joseph argued, as much for his own benefit as in an attempt to sway the imaginary version of Sebastian. It was all too easy to imagine that Sebastian might still hold a grudge against him because of the whole I.A. issue.

“Maybe I like to play the knight in shining armour?” Sebastian suggested, and Joseph choked on a laugh at the mental image of Sebastian donning a full set of medieval armour and charging to his rescue on top of a valiant steed.

God, what was he doing, sitting in this place and having such ridiculous thoughts while Sebastian fought for both of their lives.

“What am I even doing here?” Joseph asked, the question meant more for himself and the world in general than the facsimile of Sebastian that was standing next to him. “The hound didn’t hurt me that badly, did it? I should be back there, fighting it too.”

“With what?” Sebastian asked him.

Joseph groaned again, but the fake Sebastian was right. He didn’t have his pistol anymore. He didn’t even have the axe he had found earlier, or the sniper rifle. He was completely dependent on Sebastian to protect him now. Jesus, he felt so useless. He hated it.

“You know, I’m really starting to hate this place,” Joseph said as he looked around the office, glaring at the sunlight that streamed through the vertical blinds.

It wasn’t true; at least not about the office. He had too many good memories of the place, and while the office seemed to be just as dangerous as any other place he had visited recently, at least he had managed to find a couple of moments of peace there.

The fake Sebastian turned towards him, moving closer to Joseph and fixing his eyes straight on him. He expected the fake Sebastian to say something, but he had not been expecting the vice-like grip of the other man’s hand as it suddenly clamped down on Joseph’s upper arm.

“What…?” Joseph barely managed to get out.

* * *

And then he was back in the same world as Sebastian and the monstrous hound, his partner grabbing him by the arm and helping Joseph get back to his feet.

Joseph cursed. He realised then that he hadn’t felt any pain at all while he had been in the replica of their office, but now that he was back with Sebastian the mind-numbing pain in his head and stomach were back, along with a few lesser pains along one side that promised he would have some rather impressive bruises in a few hours’ time.

He blinked a couple of times, trying to clear the blurriness from his vision, but he had no luck.

Oh god. No. Was it happening again? The pain in his stomach and head and the blurriness of his vision… Please, no. Not while Sebastian was this close.

He realised that Sebastian’s arm was still around him, his partner lifting Joseph to his feet and taking as much of the smaller man’s weight as he possibly could. Joseph tried to shrug Sebastian off and to tell him to just leave Joseph behind and run for his life. He wasn’t worth this anyway, and he definitely did not want to end up hurting Sebastian again.

All that emerged from Joseph’s throat was a weak groan of protest, and even though he was so very tempted to reach down, grab his pistol and end everything now before he turned again, he was too out of it to do anything but let Sebastian help him to hobble over to… to the gate?

That blur in front of them; that was the gate, right? Once they made it through there they would be safe from the hound.

But not from Joseph.

He still couldn’t get his vision to clear. Any second now he was going to lose himself again, and who knew what damage he would manage to do this time before he was stopped?

When they reached the gate Sebastian, stupid, self-sacrificing idiot that he was, shoved Joseph through first. Joseph thought that he might fall over, he still felt so weak, but he had enough control over his body now that he managed to stay mostly upright.

He still had control over his body. Huh.

He pressed a hand up to his face, and noticed that his glasses were missing.

Oh, that was great. Just great. Here he had been freaking out over the fact that he might have been about to turn again, when in reality all that had happened was that he had dropped his glasses. That was just fantastic. Absolutely great.

He looked over Sebastian’s shoulder, hoping that he might spot his glasses somewhere on the other side of the gate, and knowing that it was useless. He could barely see anything at all without his glasses, much less spot such a small object in such a large space with so plants and objects that said object might be hiding behind.

“What is it?” Sebastian asked, apparently having noticed that something was wrong with Joseph.

“I dropped my glasses back there,” Joseph told him, feeling like an absolute idiot as he did.

The words had barely left his mouth when Sebastian let out a very heartfelt curse and turned straight back to wade back into the middle of the courtyard.

What the fuck?

Joseph had just been letting Sebastian know; he hadn’t expected the other man to actually go back after them? What the hell did Sebastian think that he was doing?

He considered going back in with Sebastian, but knew that he would be absolutely useless in his current situation. If the pain and his impaired eyesight weren’t enough, then the fact that his blurred vision was still close enough to what he had seen before he had turned and it was  _really_  freaking him out would certainly do it.

When he had come back to, Joseph had been given no way of knowing whether or not Sebastian had managed to kill the hound. The howling noises and sounds of gunfire that reached his ears as he stood helplessly behind the wrought iron of the gate let him know in no uncertain terms that the beast was anything but dead.

He couldn’t just let Sebastian fight it on his own though. He had to do  _something._

He wrapped his hands around two bars and rattled the gate as hard as he could, screaming and doing anything that he could to get the beast’s attention. He had no way of knowing whether or not it was working, at least until a large, dark shape that could only be the hound began to draw closer… and then closer… until it seemed to take up most of Joseph’s blurred vision. The creature let out a strangled howl, and Joseph took a couple of steps back as the smell of the beast assaulted his nostrils. It smelled like formaldehyde, and old, rotting things, and its breath wreaked of whatever poor creature it had last devoured.

Joseph glanced behind the beast to discover Sebastian was holding something; something that had to be his glasses; a pair of glasses that were not, no matter what situation they were in, worth Sebastian potentially losing his life over.

Now Joseph just needed to get the creature away from the gate so that Sebastian could escape from the garden once more.

His foot brushed against something, and he glanced down to see the blurred form of an old, empty bottle lying on the floor. Perhaps if he threw it…

If was worth a shot. Sebastian must have spotted him and worked out what he was trying to do, because he ducked into a nearby series of bushes, away from where the hound might be able to see him. Joseph threw the bottle as far into the garden as he could, listening for the satisfying sound of breaking glass that soon came from the other side of the enclosed area.

The hound’s ears twitched, and it turned around, heading towards the sound to investigate it, apparently content to give up on Joseph now that it knew it could not reach him.

Sebastian ran towards the gate and snuck out through the broken section, handing Joseph the glasses almost as soon as he emerged. Joseph placed them back on his face, and then shook his head.

“What the hell were you thinking?” he asked Sebastian. “Risking your life over a pair of glasses!?”

He was angry, perhaps more so than he should be. Sebastian just smiled softly and patted him on the side of the arm, almost as though he hadn’t heard a word that Joseph had said. Or perhaps he had heard something else entirely. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Damn this place and the tricks that it kept playing with them.

“It’s all right,” Sebastian said. “Let’s focus on finding Kidman.”

No. It wasn’t all right. It was so far from all right. Sebastian had just risked his life over a pair of stupid glasses. Admittedly Joseph couldn’t see well without them, and the blurriness had almost been enough to send him into total panic, but nothing justified Sebastian risking his life the way that he had.

The mention of Kidman sent another wave of guilt through him as well. There was no way that she was going to be happy to see Joseph, not after what he had done, but it looked as though it was finally time for them to confront one another about what had happened.

The two of them started walking towards the church. It was so close now; so close, and Joseph had no idea what the hell the two of them were supposed to do if the church offered them neither answers nor a reunion with Kidman.

“Jeez Joseph,” Sebastian said beneath his breath as they walked. “All that for a pair of glasses…”

It was said beneath his breath; barely more than a whisper. Joseph wasn’t sure whether Sebastian had meant for him to hear it, but he had.

He hadn’t asked Sebastian to do that. He never would have. He would have given up his glasses, along with his house, his car, and pretty much every other possession that he had, if it meant keeping Sebastian safe. Why couldn’t the other man understand that?


	7. The Church

CHAPTER SEVEN: The Church

Sebastian led the way and Joseph followed, never any more than a few steps behind his partner. He felt like every single muscle in his body was in pain. The pains in his chest and head had already been bad, but then their encounter with the hound really hadn’t helped. One of his ankles was sore, probably twisted, and he didn’t know why his shoulder was sore, but it was bad enough that the pain there was making itself known, even through the haze of the headache that was rapidly returning as they grew closer and closer to the church.

He needed a break. He needed the madness to be over. Honestly, he didn’t know how he had managed to last as long as he had.

Maybe he should just give in and end it all right at that moment. Sebastian’s back was to him. Joseph was sure that he could grab his partner’s gun and shoot himself in the head before Sebastian could react and stop him…

But no, he couldn’t do that to his partner; not after Sebastian had fought so hard to keep him alive.

Then maybe he should just give into the pain instead; listen to the whispering at the back of his mind; the slow, steady dripping of water and the low buzzing. It would be so easy. All he had to do was stop caring, stop fighting it, give in and let the buzzing and the pain overwhelm him. The darkness would claim him, as it had twice already, and this time it would be for good. He would no longer have to worry about the pain and he wouldn’t have to fight it anymore.

The darkness would be so much better than all this pain and worry.

No. He couldn’t start thinking like that. If he stopped fighting it, for even a second, then he knew that it would eventually take hold of him.

He kept his eyes firmly directed at Sebastian; at the comforting sight of his partner’s back in front of him, strong, broad and steady; always there to protect Joseph, no matter the risk to his own life.

And oh god, that thought just made Joseph feel even worse. How many times had Sebastian put himself in danger now because of Joseph? Joseph had lost count, but it was definitely too many.

Still, Sebastian continued to fight for him. Joseph couldn’t give in. He just couldn’t. It wouldn’t be fair. Sebastian fought for him and protected him, so Joseph had to stay and fight for Sebastian.

Right, because he had done such a good job of protecting Sebastian so far.

Oh god… he was just so tired.

After what had seemed like a ridiculously long time to Joseph, but which had probably been less than a minute, they finally reached the front door of the church. The door itself was a small, surprisingly modern fixture, stuck at the front of an incredibly grand, old building. Sebastian pushed it open without comment and made his way inside. The interior of the church was even grander than the outside, with large stained glass windows and tall stone pillars that must have been carved centuries earlier.

There was no sign of Kidman or the pale figure Joseph had glanced through the binoculars though, or at least no obvious ones. Joseph thought he could hear voices coming from somewhere nearby, but they were so faint and distorted that he couldn’t be sure that they weren’t just another figment of his fractured imagination.

He found himself coughing again; not the sort of loud hacks that might actually do something to dislodge whatever was crawling around inside of him, but small, pitiful things that sounding weak even to his own ears, but which nevertheless saw a couple of drops of blood appearing on the dark fabric of his gloves.

Sebastian continued to look around, while Joseph ended up leaning against a nearby pew, and then sliding into it to sit down when his legs could barely support him.

Yes. A rest. That was what Joseph needed; a nice long rest.

His stomach churned again, and he could feel the pain, like razor sharp barbed-wire twisting around in his insides. It felt as though it was getting worse. He wondered if he might eventually die if he continued to fight against it’s invasion. He couldn’t keep fighting forever, could he?

No. Stay strong. Stay strong for Sebastian. Don’t give in. Don’t give in…

Another bout of coughing grabbed hold of him, and he doubled over as the pain took over his entire body, continuing to cough as he did. He coughed and coughed and he just couldn’t seem to stop coughing, and the pain was getting worse and he couldn’t fight it anymore and he just wanted it to all be over…

Joseph felt a large, warm hand press down on his shoulder, and when he managed to open his eyes he saw Sebastian kneeling down in front of him. He had stopped coughing. Finally.

Sebastian presence seemed to be helping, if only a little. Joseph realised that he had been hunched so far forward that he might have fallen off the pew if it hadn’t been for Sebastian’s hand on his shoulder, helping him to stay in place on the pew.

Joseph tried to smile. He had a feeling that he failed miserably if the look of concern on Sebastian’s face was anything to go by. Sebastian did not ask if Joseph was okay, and he did not need to. The expression on his face and the gentle, reassuring press of his hand on Joseph’s shoulder said plenty.

“Sebastian…” Joseph began, looking his partner right in the eyes. “Have you ever had the urge to just jump, when you’re on a high place…?”

Joseph had to pause as another, shorter bout of coughing took hold of him once more.

“… or the subway rolls by?”

Oh god; the look on Sebastian’s face. That look said that what Joseph was saying was already so far away from okay that for a moment Joseph was afraid of the other man. It wasn’t that Sebastian looked angry. Joseph could definitely deal with an angry Sebastian; he had often enough during their time together as partners. No, Sebastian looked scared, and worried, and like he had no idea what he was supposed to do or say.

It was not a look that Joseph liked to see on his partner’s face.

“Imagine if you had that urge for a minute straight,” Joseph continued. He needed… He just needed Sebastian to understand… “Then two minutes.”

“You fought it off three times now Joseph,” Sebastian told him. He probably thought that he was helping. “You’re learning to stop it.”

Joseph shoved him away. It took almost all of the strength that he had left.

“You’re not listening!” he told Sebastian.

Damn it! Why couldn’t Sebastian understand? He didn’t need comfort. He didn’t want Sebastian to help him.

He was trying to warn him.

_How am I supposed to keep you safe if you won’t listen to me!_  Joseph thought. He was so close to turning again. He could feel it; the pain, the whisperings, and that slow drip, drip, drip in the back of his mind. It was so close now.

And he was so close to just giving in and letting it take over. He couldn’t stop it anymore. He didn’t have the strength. All he could do was make sure that Sebastian got as far away from him as possible, so that when he did turn, he would not hurt his partner.

“I’m not worried about stopping it Seb,” Joseph said, pleading with Sebastian and hoping somehow that the other man would  _understand_. “I’m worried about not wanting to stop it.”

It was only when he said it out loud that he realised how true it was. Some part of him wanted to turn, and not just because then it would all be over. He had almost killed Kidman. He remembered that much. He also remembered how good it had felt to almost kill her, and a worryingly significant part of him wanted to know how it would feel to actually go through with the deed.

After all, he was scared of killing Sebastian, but anyone else? Well, maybe he wouldn’t be so worried if he killed Kidman. Maybe he wouldn’t be so worried about killing a total stranger either. After all, he had managed to kill so many of those undead things already, and they had been human once, hadn’t they?

Before he had realised what he was doing he had reached up to remove the glasses from his face, bringing back the same blurred vision that had plagued him when he had turned the other two times. Both his eyesight and his morals had grown suspiciously blurry. Yet his thoughts had been crystal clear.

He missed that.

_Wouldn’t it be so much easier?_ The voices in the back of his mind returned to taunt him.  _You wouldn’t have to worry about anything anymore. Just give in…_

“Some part of me wants to turn,” Joseph confessed to Sebastian, who was still standing over him and looking at Joseph as though he was speaking the words of a stranger. “I don’t know why, and I can’t reason it away. It’s deeper than that. It’s like instinct, and it’s gettingstronger.”

All of a sudden the same loud, piercing tone as before came back, echoing through the church and ringing loudly in Joseph’s mind. He had been expecting it but that didn’t make it any less painful to hear, or make it easier to resist.

No. He couldn’t turn here. Not here. Sebastian was here. He didn’t want to hurt Sebastian. He didn’t want to…

“Hold on!” Sebastian called out, and Joseph was torn between latching onto those words, giving in to the hope that they promised, and yelling at Sebastian, telling him to run so that he might get away in time, before Joseph turned and tried to kill him.

Sebastian was coming closer though. Why was he coming closer? Didn’t he know that Joseph was dangerous? He could feel that dark part of him, stronger than ever, trying to drag him under and turn him into one of those things, but he couldn’t. He wouldn’t let himself.

There was the feeling of something stabbing into his shoulder, and then the whole world felt like it was shifting and lurching dangerously beneath them. Was this another earthquake? What the hell was happening?

His entire world felt as though it was shifting sideways. When he opened his eyes it didn’t help either. Everything seemed to be floating around him, the furniture floating around in the sky, even though he himself still seemed to be stuck on the ground.

He closed his eyes and pressed his face against the cold stone beneath him. He lay there for a moment, gasping, and then forced himself to calmly start breathing in and then out. Between the pain and the stress he was close to crying, but at least he hadn’t given in yet.

In, and then out. Everything was going to be… No. Things were not going to be okay. It was beginning to feel as though things would never be okay again, but Joseph had to make sure that at least his state of mind was okay. Sebastian needed him to be okay.

His mind started to clear as he relearned how to breathe, and then, slowly, the pain faded, along with the god-awful buzzing. The dripping sound was still there, although Joseph was growing so used to it that he barely registered its presence anymore.

He pushed himself up onto his hands, and took a look at his surroundings. It was dark, but he had sort of been expecting that. He was no longer in the church either, but he had been expecting that as well. What he did see was a scattering of different coloured shards of stained glass lying on the ground next to him, remnants of one of the windows from the church, or whatever was now left of it. There was just enough light wherever he was that the glass was reflecting different coloured rays back towards him. If not a welcome sight then it was a surprisingly beautiful one, especially considering how dark and horrifying the rest of the place had turned out to be.

“Sebastian?” he called out, not really expecting an answer, but hoping, nevertheless, that this time he would be wrong; that this time this hell of a place would be at least somewhat kind to him.

There was no response, and he stumbled to his feet. He wished that he had a torch or something of the like. Sebastian had carried one with him, but so far Joseph had not been able to find one.

There was a strange sort of tingling sensation in his arm, and he checked the skin there. He was just able to make out small, swollen red spot on his upper arm, as though someone had stabbed him with a needle. Of course; Sebastian and then the stabbing pain. He had no way of knowing what his partner had injected him with, but whatever it was it seemed to be keeping the pain and the buzzing at bay, at least for the time being.

“Sebastian!” he called out again, louder this time. He should probably be worried that the undead things, or whatever else might be lurking around the area would be able to hear him, but being attacked by those monsters hardly seemed like the worst thing that could happen to him anymore.

Still no response, and Joseph felt his heart clench painfully in his chest. He immediately started to worry that something had happened to Sebastian. Maybe he had been killed when the church had started to shake. Maybe something had gotten him.

No. He couldn’t think that way. They had been separated plenty of times before now. He was sure that they would be reunited given enough time. He just had to continue on and trust that they would find one another. Sebastian was absolutely, one hundred per cent still alive. Joseph just needed to make sure that he too managed to stay alive long enough to find him again.

His eyes were beginning to adjust to the darkness, and soon he managed to make out the shape of a door not too far in front of him. He approached it with perhaps less caution than he should have. There should not have been a door this far below the church, but Joseph was through with questioning this world and its strange logic.

He reached down to grab his pistol from his belt, and discovered that not only was it there, but it was also full of bullets. He stared in amazement at the weapon, but chose not to question it, before walking through the door in front of him.

Apparently he had left the church and its old, almost medieval architecture completely behind. He was back inside the asylum, or somewhere very like it, with the same sterile greys and whites covered in the same grime and blood.

Joseph made his way through room after room, occasionally taking out one or two of the undead when he came across them. It didn’t seem so difficult now that he had even the most basic of weapons, and he didn’t have to worry about the possibility of losing his mind again.

He was still worried about Sebastian though, and the longer he spent apart from him, the more that he worried, and the more that he wished he could see him once more, if only to make sure that he was okay.

* * *

After what seemed an age of exploring the hospital, or wherever the hell he was, Joseph found himself in a room that seemed vaguely familiar. At first he thought that it resembled the room in which he had initially been reunited with Sebastian, but no… The machines around the outside had been the same, but he had been resting in a proper tub; not the round, fleshy pods that he saw in front of himself now. His room hadn’t had the large machine in the center of it either.

Joseph checked each of the pods in turn, wondering if maybe he would find someone else resting in one of them, but they were all completely empty, at least of people. There was an amount of blood staining one of them that would have been highly disturbing if it wasn’t for the fact that Joseph had been almost completely desensitized to such sights.

Joseph left the room with the pods behind him and continued on, climbing up when the illogical structure of the location allowed it, hoping that eventually he might be able to make it back outside. He hoped for an elevator, but did not find one, and was forced to climb, ever so slowly, and in what felt like the most roundabout way possible, up flights of twisted and broken stairs, using furniture to climb through holes in the ceiling, and always fighting his way through undead after undead.

When he spotted sunlight he almost cried from relief. One half-destroyed room gave way to another, and there, through a large hole in the wall that seemed better at that moment than any door possibly could have, was the surface.

Joseph grinned and stumbled back out into the world. He had never thought that he would find the broken ruins of a city so beautiful.

He scanned the horizon, looking for landmarks that he might recognize. It all seemed completely unfamiliar to him, except for Beacon Mental Hospital, which stood far in the distance, completely undamaged and right in the middle of all of the chaos, as though this broken world that they had ended up in revolved around the hospital itself.

Joseph frowned, and wondered how he had managed to end up back in the ruins of the city. It wasn’t as though the layout of this world made any sense at the best of times, but going from hospital to underground to church, back to underground and then to the hospital, only to end up miles away from the hospital in which he had been walking over minutes earlier made so little sense that his mind was starting to hurt just trying to make sense out of it.

The world outside was completely destroyed. When he tried to find a way forward Joseph was met only with wide chasms and seemingly bottomless pits. Eventually he found a new direction in which to travel, but to his dismay the path started to take him back down once more, one flight and then another leading back down into a series of tunnels that seemed as twisted and confusing as the ones through which he had already travelled.

There didn’t seem to be any end to them, and as the way grew dark once more and there was still no sign of Sebastian or any other living person, or any indication that he was making any sort of progress at all, Joseph began to despair. Was he destined to continue wandering these dark halls by himself for the rest of eternity? Had he finally gone completely insane? If he hadn’t then this endless darkness and loneliness was bound to do it eventually.

He was growing tired, but knew that he could not stop to sleep. Sleeping would leave him vulnerable, and the undead he had fought so far had shown enough craftiness that they would undoubtedly be able to sneak up on him and kill him while he slept.

So no rest. And no light. And no companionship or signs of life except his own ragged breathing echoing back to him from the darkness.

The tunnels continued to take him further and further down, dead end after dead end always seeming to force him round and down in a never ending spiral, until he finally found himself in a long, dark corridor that seemed almost identical to the ones that he had explored back in Beacon.

Doors lined the hall on either side, but each and every one of them was locked when he tried them, and no amount of force seemed to make them open. There seemed to be barely any light, except for the smallest amount possible to allow him to see, and a small glimmer at the end of the hallway. That glimmer seemed at least a mile away to him though, and the light from it seemed to flicker and break as it reflected and danced around the long hallway, casting long, extended shadows that crept over the floor and ceiling, like long tendrils reaching out to grab him.

For some reason Joseph had a very strong feeling that he didn’t want to reach the end of the hallway and discover what it was that lay there, either creating or bathed in that warm, flickering light, but always it seemed as there was no other way forward. The doors remained unresponsive to his touch, and he was sure that he was walking into a dead end, yet it seemed like there was nothing he could do but travel forward, towards the light and whatever new horror this world had in store for him.

As he grew closer he started to be able to make out several long spikes protruding from the wall, undoubtedly responsible for the longest of the shadows. A little closer and he could make out a dark head of hair and black slacks and vest.

It wasn’t much longer before he realised what it was that he was seeing, and his heart lurched painfully in his chest. A strangled cry that sounded barely human, even to his own ears, emerged from his throat and he ran forward as fast as his legs would carry him.

The light had come from an old fashioned torch which Joseph had seen Sebastian carrying a couple of times now. It lay on the floor, completely abandoned, but still burning as brightly as it had when Joseph had first entered the corridor, and showing no signs of stopping any time soon.

Its light fell on a scene worse than anything that Joseph could have predicted. Sebastian was hanging there, his body pinned to the wall in half a dozen places by what looked like thick steel harpoons. Most of the harpoons had slammed straight through his torso, but one had been shoved through each of his hands, deliberately posing the other man like Jesus on the cross. Blood still oozed from the wounds, staining the tan of his jacket and the white of his shirt, and trailing down the wall behind him.

“Sebastian,” Joseph cried out. “Oh please no. Sebastian, no…”

He was only vaguely aware of speaking as he reached out and around the harpoons to press his hands against Sebastian’s face. There was still the smallest amount of warmth there.

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no…” he heard himself muttering as he tried to get closer to the other man’s body, an almost impossible feat thanks to the length of the harpoons.

“No Sebastian. No. You can’t be dead. You can’t…”

He eventually managed to wrap his hands around the sides of Sebastian’s torso. Maybe somehow he could get Sebastian down. Maybe he could still help…

Even through the haze of grief that clouded his mind part of him was still aware of the fact that there was no way in hell that Sebastian could still be alive. Even if by some miracle Sebastian was, the idea that he might survive after his body had been pierced in so many places was a completely laughable one.

“I’m going to get you down,” Joseph heard himself whisper, his voice cracking. “It’s going to be okay Seb. It’s going to be okay…”

No. Nothing was ever going to be okay ever again. How could it possibly be when Sebastian was dead?

Joseph had managed to remove the harpoons from each of Sebastian’s hands and was just trying to figure out how to lift Sebastian off the rest of them when the other man’s eyes suddenly flew open.

He reached towards Joseph with hands that suddenly seemed more like the claws of a beast than the gentle but firm hands of his partner. They lashed out, trying to grab at him and Joseph jumped back in alarm.

Sebastian didn’t have the reddened eyes or boil covered skin that he would have if he had turned into one of  _them_. What was wrong with him?

Before Joseph could think any further, laughter began to echo through the space, sounding both cruel and though it was coming from right behind Joseph.

He turned around to find Ruvik staring at him and the gory remains of Sebastian and grinning from ear to ear. The pale man started to approach, and Joseph had just enough presence of mind to reach for his gun, but Ruvik continued on past Joseph, heading towards whatever was left of Sebastian.

“Really? This is what you’re most afraid of?” Ruvik asked, and Joseph knew that the words were intended for him rather than whatever was left of his partner. Ruvik reached out and pressed one hand to the side of Sebastian’s face. Joseph’s partner had gone still again, and made no attempt to attack Ruvik or to shift the pale hand that ran almost lovingly down the side of Sebastian’s face.

“So sentimental,” Ruvik said, spitting out the word as though he were mocking Joseph with it. “I was hoping for something more entertaining…”

And with that Ruvik, or at least his visible form, was gone. Sebastian, or whatever was left of him, lurched against his restraints once more, reaching out towards Joseph and screaming in either pain or rage. Joseph didn’t know which one it was, but either way it was a sound that had never emerged from Sebastian’s throat before, and it made Joseph feel as though his internal organs were trying to wrap around his heart and suffocate it.

Sebastian managed to shuffle himself forward on the harpoons, inch by painstaking inch, always tearing at his wounds as he did. All that Joseph could do for what felt like the longest time was stare in horror as Sebastian lurched closer and closer to freedom. The harpoons tugged at his flesh as he moved, and when he finally managed to pull himself from the thick metal bars pinning him in place, Joseph was treated to the sight of several large, gaping holes that went all the way through his partner’s body, dark red blood falling from each of them in thick, heavy clots, before gravity took hold of Sebastian and he fell to the ground as though he had as much control over his body as a sack of rocks.

For a moment Joseph allowed himself to believe that maybe that was it and whatever was left of his partner would move no longer, but then Sebastian managed to get his arms beneath him once more, and started pushing himself back upright.

Joseph backed away slowly, checking his gun as he did. He pointed it straight at Sebastian as his undead partner lurched to his feet, hoping that whatever was left of Sebastian would not give him a reason to pull the trigger.

Sebastian’s stomach was still bleeding profusely, and Joseph heard a revolting series of sloshing and squishing sounds as his partner’s internal organs shifted around, taking advantage of the spaces that had suddenly opened up inside of him.

For a couple of seconds the two of them just stood there, Joseph tightly gripping the pistol, and his undead partner just standing there, slouching, long hair hanging limply over his downturned face.

“Sebastian?” Joseph asked, his voice cracking. He wasn’t sure that he wanted any sort of response, but nevertheless he got one, of a sorts. The undead man in front of him slowly lifted his head to stare straight at Joseph.

Joseph was reasonably sure that he could have dealt with the lack of recognition that he had been expecting, but when Sebastian stared at him his features were filled to the brim with hate for the other man.

Joseph shuddered, and he realised that his hands were shaking where he trying to hold on to his pistol.

“Please don’t make me hurt you,” Joseph whispered.

Sebastian charged straight towards him. Joseph’s eyes slammed shut as he pulled the trigger. One. Two. Three shots.

There was a pained howl, but nothing more. Joseph had half been expecting to feel those claws digging into his flesh, regardless of the bullets or whether or not he had managed to shoot accurately. After all, neither the undead things that they had been fighting, or Sebastian himself, had ever really given up so easily.

Joseph slowly opened one eye, and then the other. His pistol was still smoking in front of him, and Sebastian was lying on the floor, writhing and moaning in pain.

Joseph choked back a sob. It didn’t seem possible that Sebastian could have survived being impaled on those things only to be stopped by a measly three bullets. Then again, Joseph wasn’t sure that any of this was real. None of this felt real, but the sight of his partner, full of holes and bleeding out on the floor was still almost more than Joseph could stand.

He stood there, staring at Sebastian’s form and clutching the gun in his hands tightly, until Sebastian stopped writhing and moaning in pain, and went completely still and dead, hopefully for good this time.

Joseph couldn’t feel anything, except a cold, sort of detached numbness. What would he do if this did turn out to be real? He didn’t know. He couldn’t think anymore.

He tried to tell himself that this couldn’t be real. Sebastian had managed to resist the dark whisperings for so long. Sebastian was good, and not haunted by the same dark imaginings as Joseph. He wouldn’t give in. He couldn’t. He didn’t even look like one of the undead things, after all. This was all a lie. It had to be.

“Don’t worry,” Ruvik said, as though he could read Joseph’s mind. Joseph glanced beside him to find that the pale man had appeared right beside him once more.

“That thing wasn’t real,” he told Joseph. “Most of what you see in here isn’t, although I’m sure you’ve worked out that much for yourself by now.”

He clamped a hand down on Joseph’s shoulder as he walked past, and Joseph shuddered as the other man’s touch sent a cold, uncomfortable shiver running right down the length of his spine. Ruvik came to a stop beside Sebastian’s now still and silent form, and gave it a gentle prod with the tip of his foot. The corpse shifted a little, and let out a groan that was completely unrecognisable as the partner Joseph had come to know and love.

“Doesn’t mean they can’t hurt you though,” Ruvik added, almost as an afterthought.

“Why are you telling me this?” Joseph asked him.

Ruvik stopped and seemed to contemplate the question for a moment, almost as though he himself was not entirely sure of the answer.

“I find you… intriguing,” he finally settled on, before fixing Joseph with his cold stare. “Intriguing, perplexing and… mildly irritating.”

He started walking towards Joseph once more, his steps slow and calm, and came to a stop right in front of Joseph’s face.

“Why haven’t you turned yet?” he asked, staring at Joseph as though he would be able to discern the answer if only he looked hard enough. “You’re weak. Broken. More so than many of the others. There’s nothing special about you, not like Leslie or Kid, so why are you still you?”

Joseph wasn’t sure whether the other man was expecting an answer or not, but his own eyes drifted, almost unconsciously, to the prone form of Sebastian, or whatever it was, as it still lay on the ground next to them, bleeding profusely. Ruvik followed his gaze and then frowned.

“Ah,” he practically purred. “Of course.”

When he next turned to look at Joseph Ruvik was smiling once more, as though he suddenly had it all figured out. Well, that was it, wasn’t it? Joseph had managed to keep going for as long as he had because Sebastian had been there to help him, to make sure that Joseph didn’t give in or give up, and even when he hadn’t Joseph had been able to keep going because Sebastian had believed in him, had let him know in no uncertain terms that he still needed Joseph.

“And what if you did manage to destroy him?” Ruvik asked. “The real one?”

Ruvik made it sound less like a question and more like a threat. Joseph was suddenly stricken by terrible images; his hands around Sebastian’s throat, unable to stop himself. Chasing after Sebastian with the desire to tear him to pieces, as he had with Kidman. Or even worse, him, chaining Sebastian to a wall and making sure that he would never be able to leave again, guarding him fiercely and ripping limb from limb anyone that tried to get close to him (like Kidman, oh poor Kidman he had never really wanted to hurt her, only he had…)

“Stop it. Get out of my head!” Joseph screamed.

“I would, and gladly,” Ruvik replied, his voice right next to Joseph’s ear, making the detective freeze in place.

“But you see, dear Joseph, I’m not in your head. You’re in mine.”

Joseph whirled around just in time to catch a glimpse of the now disturbingly familiar burned skin and stained white cloak of his tormentor before the ground began to crack and crumble beneath him.

* * *

The fall didn’t seem so long this time, and Joseph managed to roll as he hit the ground, avoiding most of what could have been a painful landing. His pistol had fallen out of his hand as he landed though, and he scrambled to recover it, before righting himself almost immediately.

He narrowed his eyes as he looked at his new surroundings. This didn’t appear to be part of the hospital, or the church, or anywhere that he had been so far. If anything it resembled a prison, full of tall, iron-barred walls that stretched to the ceiling, and small claustrophobic cells. It seemed as much of a maze as the cemetery near the church, and Joseph tried to get as good a look at his surroundings as possible before he set off, knowing that getting lost in an area such as this one could possibly spell his doom.

One wall seemed rather like any of the others, although here and there red symbols had been painted on the otherwise plain tiled walls, and Joseph thought he might be able to use to keep his bearings, until he realized that they all seemed to be the same pattern; one line with two zigzags passing through near the top, reminding Joseph of an eye, or possibly some sort of tower?

As he looked closer Joseph started to realise that there were large amounts of barbed wire wrapped around some of the bars, and crawling up the walls like some sort of natural vine. He supposed it was no weirder than anything else that he had encountered of late, but there was something about it that deeply disturbed him. Lines of rust stretched out from the wire and into the cracks of the walls. The general vibe of the place made Joseph feel as though he needed a nice, long, warm shower and a tetanus shot, not necessarily in that order.

Well, at least there didn’t seem to be any undead down here, although knowing Ruvik there was undoubtedly going to be something dangerous that he would have to contend with. Joseph kept his pistol at the ready, and kept an ear out for any scraping or screeching noises that might indicate an enemy, but there was nothing.

The first time he noticed one of the strange boxes, it was lurking in a corner of one of the cells, almost completely in darkness. Joseph had almost missed it. It was a little larger than a human head, and resembled an oddly shaped safe, with what appeared to be a combination dial on a door on the front. The whole thing was wrapped in barbed wire, and covered in the same dirty red rust as the rest of the room.

It was odd, but no more so than anything else that Joseph had encountered, and he might have put it from his mind completely if it wasn’t for the fact that he began to see more of them as he moved further through the maze. The second one made him pause for a moment. By the time that he had seen six he was sure that something strange was going on.

He almost jumped and turned to look behind him as the sound of a heavy iron door slamming shut echoed all around him. The entire world seemed to flicker and distort around him, his vision turning red for a second or so before going normal once more. Joseph had the distinct feeling that something in the world had changed, and not for the better.

There was the sound of rattling beside him, and Joseph looked over to discover that one of the wire-wrapped boxes was vibrating loudly, its corners thumping on the ground beneath it as it shook uncontrollably.

The box began to rise into the air, a body slowly forming beneath it until it towered above Joseph. It was mostly man-shaped, except for the barbed-wire box that sat on top of its shoulders as a twisted parody of a head.

This new monster gripped a heavy, deadly looking war-hammer in one hand, and dragged a blood-soaked sack full of who knew what in the other. It turned slowly, and Joseph got the distinct feeling that it’s inhuman, wire-covered head was staring straight at him.


	8. The Keeper

CHAPTER EIGHT: The Keeper

Joseph’s newest enemy held a shape that at least _looked_ human, but it was impossible to tell what lay beneath the heavy coveralls, gloves, boots and blood-stained apron that covered its entire body. Joseph couldn’t see a single inch of skin beneath the get up, and he knew enough about the way this world worked now that he knew not to trust his eyes alone.

The monster stared right at him, its heavy, metallic excuse for a head fixed right on his position, and then it was stalking towards him, taking one slow step at a time, it’s weight making the ground beneath it shake with every single one. Joseph fired off a couple of shots and then, when the monster didn’t react to the bullets piercing it’s body at all, Joseph turned around and ran as fast as his legs could carry him.

Joseph glanced behind himself to check on the monster’s position, only to find that he had left it behind completely. Even though he had started to run it still insisted on following him at the same slow, relentless pace. As Joseph watched the monster pulled something from the large pack on its back. It’s hand came out holding two large discs, which it promptly threw on the floor in front of it. Joseph had no way of knowing what purpose the discs might have, but the fact that they were covered in barbed wire meant that he intended to stay as far away from them as possible.

He continued to run, hoping that if he was fast enough then he might be able to lose the monster completely, but there was nowhere to hide in the strange maze of metal-barred walls that he now found himself in, and wherever Joseph turned he found that he could still spot the monster behind a wall or two.

It wasn’t long before Joseph found himself stuck in a dead end. There was nowhere to run, and despite how many times he had turned around in the labyrinth, sprinting ahead and trying to lose the monster in the maze, it always found a way to follow him. It was still heading towards him, one ponderous foot falling in front of the other.

Joseph’s back was against a wall. He had no choice but to fight. He fired off a few more bullets, each of them hitting the monster right in its disturbingly inhuman head. The final two bullets seemed to pass through the thick metallic shell of its head, lodging into whatever flesh was inside and sending dark founts of blood and broken flesh pouring out from within.

The creature sank to its knees, apparently defeated.

Joseph watched the thing carefully as its body melted away, leaving nothing but the twisted and broken metal box that had served as the creature’s head, and a pool of thick, viscous liquid where it had been. Joseph couldn’t believe that it had been that easy. The creature had seemed so terrifying, so menacing, and yet he had been able to stop it with a few normal, ordinary bullets.

He breathed a sigh of relief and tried to get his bearings. There had to be a way out of this maze. He just had to find it.

He began to retrace his steps, knowing that at the very least he needed to find a way out of the dead end he had managed to find himself stuck in. He had only made it as far as turning a couple of corners, however, when the world flashed red and seemed to shift sideways once more. There it was again, that godawful rattling, and when Joseph turned around he saw that another one of the boxes had risen up and the thick humanoid frame of the creature he thought he had killed was growing from beneath it.

“Oh Jesus, no,” Joseph muttered softly.

He ran once more, firing a shot or two back at the creature at every opportunity he was given. As he ran he took note of the metal boxes that now seemed to be all around him; lurking in the dark corners of the cells, resting perfectly innocently against one of the tiled walls… There were dozens of them, and if that thing could keep regenerating as long as there was one of those strange boxes, then Joseph was sure that he did not have enough bullets in his gun, or enough energy left to take care of them all.

He turned a corner, and found himself on the other side of one of the barred walls to the creature. It contemplated him for a second, and then brought the massive hammer it held up to slam against its own head. Whether it was supposed to be a threat or a challenge, Joseph didn’t know, but the way that the steel rang out was certainly enough to unnerve him.

He started, and then cried out as pain shot out from his foot and curled its way up his leg. He hadn’t been watching where he was going, and in his panic he had stepped onto one of the discs that the creature had been placing all over the ground. The barbed wire had shot up as Joseph had stepped onto it, wrapping around his leg and keeping him stuck in place.

The creature was still advancing towards him, the cells and the strange layout of the place apparently doing nothing to disorient the creature as it had Joseph. He struggled against the barbed wire as it tore into his pants and the flesh beneath, trying his hardest to escape. He cast his eyes around the area, trying to find some sort of sharp object that he might be able to use to cut the wire, or something that he could use to destroy the trap, but there was nothing.

The monster was only a foot or so away from him now, and he had no way to get away from it. He turned back to find the monster had brought its hammer up, apparently intending to hit Joseph with all of the force that it could muster.

“Oh god no,” Joseph muttered as he caught sight of the sharp points of the weapon, and the way that even this creature, with its bulk, strained to lift the heavy weapon that would undoubtedly make short work of Joseph’s comparatively fragile body.

Joseph brought the pistol up, shooting again and again at the creature’s cold, inhuman face. It took an entire round, but the thing finally dropped dead just as the weapon was swinging towards Joseph. It hit him, but with much less force than it might have otherwise.

It was still enough to send him sprawling. A burst of pain began to blossom and spread out all over the side of his body that had taken the hit. The sharp points of the weapon had managed to break through the fabric of his shirt and split his skin in several places, and he had a feeling that not only would half of his torso be covered in bruises the next day, but he would find that a couple of his ribs had been broken as well.

He still wasn’t in the clear though. One of the boxes was already starting to shake and lurch to life not too far away from him, and the barbed wire was still wrapped around his leg.

He reached down with both arms and tore the barbed wire off as quickly as he could, the metal catching and tearing into his skin in several spots, leaving dark red tracks behind. He screamed and then let out a weak-sounding sob as he finally managed to remove the trap, and then threw it to one side.

The creature was still coming, and he hadn’t worked out how he was supposed to deal with it yet. He had to find a way out of the room, but as far as he could see there were no doors or windows or holes in the ceiling.

Perhaps he could find a way to trap the creature. If he grabbed some of the barbed wire from the traps that the creature was dropping on the ground then he might be able to string it up between two walls and trap the creature behind it. Joseph was sure that the thing would be able to break through it, but at least it would give him some time.

No. That definitely wouldn’t work. It would take time to prepare such a trap. Time he did not have.

The traps themselves though; maybe he could somehow use them against the creature? Yes, over there. There was an area that you couldn’t reach without passing through a line of traps. Joseph would easily be able to jump over them, but the creature didn’t seem to be capable of lifting its feet all that high, and perhaps with a little bit of a push…

It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was a start. Joseph ran towards the spot that he had discovered, leaping over the traps and hoping, for once, that the creature would follow. It did, charging after him with a sudden, surprising burst of speed. He hadn’t known that it could move that quickly, and he picked up his speed, afraid that the monster might catch up to him.

He made it though, jumping over the trap and turning around to shoot at the monster. His shots hit their target a couple of times. It wasn’t enough to do any serious damage, but it _was_ enough to make the creature stumble, and Joseph let out a cry of triumph as one of his opponent’s feet landed on one of the traps.

Barbed wire shot up from the device, wrapping up the creature’s leg and up around its torso. It struggled against it for a moment, the hand previously holding the spiked sack dropping its burden to instead clutch at its thigh and attempt to pull it free. When that proved useless, it raised its featureless head to stare at Joseph once more.

Even though it did not have eyes or a mouth, Joseph could somehow tell that the creature was staring at him with hatred and malice.

The creature abandoned its struggle and instead lifted both of its hands up to clutch at its heavy, metallic head. Its fingers dug into the metal with an inhuman amount of strength, and then the creature yanked its own head sharply sideways.

The metal box dislocated from the being’s shoulders in a spray of blood and twisted flesh. It did not manage to remove its own head in entirety. Instead the creature fell to the ground, its now twisted and broken head connected to the rest of its body via a thin, broken tangle of flesh.

It didn’t take Joseph long to realise what the creature was planning. Rather than allow itself to become trapped, it had voluntarily destroyed its current body, and was undoubtedly already attempting to materialise in the next.

Sure enough Joseph heard the rattling sound right behind him once more, and the world shifted in blinding flashes of red. The creature had targeted the box closest to Joseph.

He cursed and readied himself to fight once more.

He knew that he would not be able to stand his ground against the monster and so he ran, occasionally taking pot shots at the creature and paying as much attention as he could to wear he was running, not wanting to get caught in a dead end or one of the creature’s traps again.

He needed a plan. He couldn’t trap the creature. He couldn’t find a way out of the room. He couldn’t just keep running and fighting until there were no boxes left either; he knew that he didn’t have the stamina or the bullets required for that, and the blood loss and pain in his side were really starting to slow him down.

Perhaps there was an easier way to destroy the metal boxes though. If there were no more of the things, than the monster could not materialise, right?

Joseph turned to face the creature once more and fired a full round of bullets into its head. It fell to the ground, blood oozing from the metal box, and for a few blessed seconds Joseph was allowed to think.

He ran to the nearest box, knowing that he would not have long, and determined to get as much out of the short break between fights that he could. The box was heavy enough that lifting it aggravated the wound in his side, causing sharp bursts of pain to wrack his entire body, and he dropped it. The metal corners dinted the concrete ground beneath, and the box itself remained completely undamaged. Joseph began to fear that destroying the creature’s heads would not be as easy as he had anticipated.

He could not give up yet though, and so he leaned back down, grasping the box with both hands and gritting his teeth against the pain as he lifted it.

The world started to flash red as he continued to lift. With horror he realised that the very box he was holding had begun to shake in his hands.

He almost let it fall to the ground out of horror, but looking at the dint in the concrete by his feet gave him another idea.

He slammed the box into the nearest wall. The tiles smashed beneath the onslaught, falling to the ground in pieces along with chips of concrete.

Joseph readied himself for a repeat, but at that moment the front of the box erupted open, and long, fleshy tentacles reached out to try to grab at his arms and face.

He screamed and smashed the box, tentacles first, into the wall, again, and again and again. Somewhere along the line the thing stopped shaking in his arms, and began to ooze blood and other, strange liquids, but he did not stop, not until the wall gave way in a shower of concrete and broken tile.

Joseph let the pile of broken metal and flesh in his hands fall to the ground.

The hole in front of him wasn’t big, but it was enough that he would be able to escape from this maze of steel bars and barbed wire.

He ducked through the hole, stepping over the creature’s mangled head as he did. It was a tight fit, and his body protested the movements, but it seemed that he was finally safe once more.

The room in front of him had the same tiled walls as the last had, but the barbed wire and the maze of iron bars had gone. Instead Joseph found himself looking at what appeared to be a large pool. There were lights here, although they were mostly broken fluorescents that made Joseph’s head hurt if he stared at their flickering for too long. They were enough to reveal the bottom of the pool however, and by their light Joseph could just make out a door on the other side of the room.

Joseph approached the pool cautiously, and was immediately overwhelmed by the stench of alcohol.

Joseph frowned. Of course it was alcohol. Water would have been too easy. He thought once more of the broken skin on the side of his torso and cringed. He knew that he was about to be in a tonne of pain, but as far as he could tell there was no other way to the other side of the room.

He steeled himself for the coming pain and jumped into the pool as quickly as he dared, reasoning that it would be better to get the ordeal over and done with as soon as possible. The liquid immediately soaked through his clothing, and he screamed as it came in contact with the broken flesh beneath.

As though in answer to his cries of pain, the world shifted and began to flicker red once more. Joseph sobbed, both from the pain and from the possibility that he still was not done with the horrible creature and its cruel, inhuman face.

He started to push through the water. It was high enough that it reached half way up his chest, so progress was slow. He heard a loud crash behind him, and turned around just in time to see more of the wall go crumbling to the ground. The creature had used its giant war hammer to widen the hole that Joseph had created.

Joseph grit his teeth and attempted to move faster. He was almost half way through the pool now. Maybe he would be lucky and the creature would not be able to swim.

His hopes were dashed as the creature jumped into the pool behind him and immediately started to wade after him, moving just as quickly as it did while on land, even with its weapon and its bloodied sack dragging through the water behind it.

The fumes from the alcoholic pool were starting to get to Joseph, making his head spin and his vision blur, but he could not let himself surrender, not when the creature was still coming after him. If he was to stop, even for a moment, then he knew that it would all be over. The liquid was harder to move through than water though, and every moment felt like it took an age.

His head was spinning by the time he reached the other side, and he was barely able to pull himself out. The alcohol was weighing him down in a way that no body of water ever had before, and the pain on his side (and from a dozen other little scratches that he hadn’t really been aware of until the alcohol on them _forced_ him to be aware of them) was enough that he was sure he should have blacked out by now.

He stumbled onto relatively dry land once more on his hands and knees, choking on fumes and trying to hold back cries of pain as he did.

And still the creature kept coming towards him at the same relentless pace.

Joseph glanced up at the lights above the pool, an idea managing to form in his mind despite the overwhelming haze. He had kept his pistol out of the liquid as he had waded through it, knowing that he might still need it.

He pointed the weapon towards one of the lights that was positioned above the pool. Aiming it proved almost impossible, but he fired off one shot and then another, hoping that one of them would prove true.

The light erupted in a shower of sparks, and Joseph let out a sigh of relief. The sparks fell to the pool, causing it to burst into flame. The creature, still wading through its depths, disappeared behind a wall of fire.

Joseph fell to the ground, his face hitting cold, damp tile. Behind the wall of fire, and beneath the drunken and pain-filled haze that was currently making his vision swim, he could just see the splashes of boiling blood and burning flesh that erupted from the creature’s head as it was roasted alive.

In the back of his mind he was vaguely aware of the fact that there were still more boxes lying beyond the pool in the next room, and he had no evidence that the fire would be enough to stop the creature for good, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.

There was now a wall of fire between himself and those boxes. Hopefully it would burn for a very long time; long enough to keep the creature at bay indefinitely.

It was enough. It had to be. He needed to rest.


	9. Torment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks all for sticking with this fic. :) I love all of you.
> 
> Having said that, I'll be doing Nanowrimo throughout November, so there won't be any updates to this story for a month. I love this story and have absolutely no intentions of abandoning it; I'm just taking a short break to focus on one of my original stories. 
> 
> Wish me luck and I'll see you all in December.

CHAPTER NINE: Torment

He couldn’t take it anymore. He needed a break.

 _Please,_ he found himself thinking through the pain. _When I open my eyes, please let me wake up anywhere than in that tiled room. Please let it have all been a bad dream._

He opened his eyes to see warm sunlight filtering into the room through soft curtains. He knew this room; knew those curtains and the soft beige carpet upon which he was resting. He hadn’t lived there for years though, so he couldn’t decide whether waking up there was comforting after all. It almost felt like spying on a previous version of his life; one in which he no longer had any right to be.

A small girl stood in front of him with her hands held behind her back. She had his eyes but her mother’s blonde hair.

“What are you doing down there on the floor Daddy?”

“What?” Joseph muttered. “Amy? What are you…?”

He knew straight away that this version of his daughter couldn’t be real. In real life Amy hadn’t been as small as she currently looked for at least a couple of years. He hadn’t been visiting her as much as he probably should have however, so this was probably the best his memory could do.

Even now Joseph wasn’t all that happy to see her. He didn’t think that this world had the capacity to hurt the real Amy, but he didn’t want to be taunted by images of his daughter suffering on top of everything else.

Amy tilted her head and stared down at him. She blinked a couple of times before screwing up her face at him.

“Are you hurt?” she asked him.

“No,” Joseph replied. “I don’t think so anyway.”

And somehow it was true. He moved his torso, expecting at least a little ache from where he had been injured earlier, but there was nothing. His wounds had completely disappeared.

“You can’t be here,” Joseph muttered as he got to his feet. “I don’t want you and your mother to be mixed up in all of this as well.”

“Mixed up in all of this?” a much more mature female voice began. Joseph turned around to find his ex-wife Marie leaning against a rather familiar couch; one that probably hadn’t sat in this particular room for years now. Marie would have undoubtedly taken it along with most of the furniture when they had gone their separate ways.

“We should have been here from the start,” Marie scoffed. “This place clearly likes messing with your head. You would think that thoughts of your family would be in there somewhere.”

Marie sighed, and she sounded just as tired as Joseph felt. While her mother spoke Amy just stood there, her eyes moving backwards and forwards between her mother and father. She looked more bored than worried by the exchange, as though this was a script that the family had followed a hundred times before.

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” Marie continued. “Your priorities always did seem to be elsewhere.”

She wasn’t meeting Joseph’s eyes, but he couldn’t blame her. She was right. He hadn’t been the most devoted father of late.

Marie called to Amy and the little girl came running over to be scooped up in her mother’s arms. Joseph moved slowly towards the two of them, double-checking as he did to make sure that his injuries really had disappeared, and that his clothing was undamaged and free from blood-stains.

He reached out to Marie and Amy, and stopped with his hand frozen in mid-air. It was admittedly nice to see a pair of friendly faces, and the desire to simply reach out and hold the two of them in his arms was almost overwhelming.

He couldn’t though. He couldn’t allow them to stay here, even if they weren’t real. He couldn’t let this world have more ammunition to use against him. They had to go. He couldn’t stay here.

He pulled his hand back to his side, closed his eyes and tried to will the scene in front of him away. He could no longer lay claim to that house and the two girls within. He had no right to be there, and no desire to either; not when he knew that it would only be a matter of time before the nightmare managed to find a way to twist those memories against him as well. 

* * *

 When he opened his eyes again it was to discover that he was still lying on his side beside the pool of blood and alcohol, and he couldn’t help but cry out as the pain in his side made itself known again.

He tried to push himself up off the ground, and screamed as his body let him know about a dozen different injuries and pains. His torso ached; his shirt and trousers and skin were still torn in places, and a rather large puddle of mixed blood and alcohol had gathered on the ground around him. The fire still burned steadily in the pool beside him, making the room reek of burning flesh and spirits.

Then, over the sound of his own cries of pain and the roaring of the flames beside him, Joseph heard another noise that turned his blood cold. It was a slow, metallic scraping, and it was slowly getting louder.

His heart hammered in his chest. He didn’t need to see the creature to know exactly what was coming for him. He had heard those noises before, and knew that what awaited him now carried a long butcher’s knife and a deadly syringe.

… _the ghost of that doctor that…_

Joseph continued to sob as he tried to pick himself up off the ground. He tried to tell himself that he was imagining things; that the sound wasn’t there, and definitely wasn’t getting louder. He knew that he didn’t have the energy to run away from the Doctor at that moment. He wasn’t sure he had enough energy to even get to his feet.

He almost prayed that the whispering that had haunted him in the back of his mind for so long would return and take him then. If nothing else then it would numb the pain and take control of his body, hopefully for long enough that he could get away from the oncoming danger. Even that dark calling had left him now though. There was no dripping sound or whispering at the back of his mind, and the only pain in his torso or head came from the wounds that his latest opponent had inflicted.

The scraping sound came again, and this time there was no denying the fact that whatever had caused it was drawing closer. Joseph forced himself to his hands and knees with a groan, knowing that if he didn’t get up soon then he would undoubtedly be doomed.

He managed to make it to one knee before his legs collapsed out from under him. His body wouldn’t respond. His injuries had made him too weak.

He tried to tell himself that the doctor wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. Ghosts did not exist. The double doors to the room in which Joseph crouched swung open with a loud ‘thump’ and Joseph slammed his eyes shut, willing the creature to disappear.

“You’re not real,” he muttered. “You’re not real. You’re not real. Ghosts are not real…”

He continued to squeeze his eyes shut as tightly as he possibly could.

The doctor grew closer and closer. The scraping and clanking was abruptly silenced, and Joseph could practically see the ghost raising its massive knife above Joseph’s head. It was about to bring it down at any second.

“You’re not real!” Joseph screamed.

The ghost apparently didn’t care whether or not Joseph thought its existence was possible however. When Joseph opened his eyes, it was just in time to see a knife of several feet in length falling towards him. He rolled out of the way just in time to avoid being sliced in two by the monstrous weapon. The blade slammed into the ground right where Joseph had been crouched a few seconds earlier, cracking the tiles beneath and coming to a brief rest amongst the puddle of blood and alcohol that Joseph had left behind.

The ghost doctor turned around and fixed Joseph with its red-lit gaze. The fire at its back gave the creature a warm, other-worldly glow that matched the red of its eyes perfectly. The scene looked like something taken straight from a classic depiction of the underworld, and Joseph wondered whether or not he had actually died and somehow ended up in hell. This place certainly seemed like hell to him.

Whatever traces of a survival instinct he had left forced Joseph to his feet. He was already fairly certain that he didn’t stand a chance against the Doctor, but he brought his pistol up anyway and sent a couple of bullets flying towards the creature’s eyes.

The first one went straight through as though the creature was made of no more than air, but the second connected with one of the creature’s eyes but rebounded, leaving the eye itself cracked as though it was made of strong glass. The creature let out a howl of rage and dropped its weapons, before bringing its hands up to cradle its damaged face, doing its best to hide the light that was now bleeding out from one of its eyes at a much brighter intensity than before.

Joseph lined up another shot. He had clearly hurt the creature. Maybe if he hit its other eye then he could hurt it again. He pulled the trigger and then cursed as the gun made noise except for a small, pathetic ‘click, click’. He was out of bullets.

“Jesus, no,” he muttered to himself as he searched his pockets and his belt for any more bullets that he might have forgotten about.

He didn’t have enough time to search properly though, let alone to reload. The ghost doctor had already turned its gaze back in Joseph’s direction. It still cradled its broken eye with one of its long, spindly hands, but the other clutched the long knife that it had retrieved from the floor.

Joseph turned around and ran as fast as his broken body would allow him to. He had no idea where he was going though and paused once he had left the room as he tried to get his bearings. The paths to both his right and left seemed equally dirty and likely to end in a dead end, but he didn’t have long to think things through, not with the ghost doctor behind him and undoubtedly ready to murder him.

Joseph turned right merely on a whim, reasoning that either way had to be better than staying still while the Doctor was coming after him.

Running had torn a couple of his injuries back open, and he was leaving a distinct trail of pale red liquid behind him. He would not be able to hide. His only hope was to outrun the monstrous ghost, and he wasn’t sure that it was going to be possible in his current state.

Meanwhile the Doctor seemed to have recovered from the shock of Joseph injuring it, and had come surging after him before Joseph had even managed to turn a single corner.

The knife swung just over Joseph’s head. He managed to duck it in time, but lost his balance and went tumbling to the ground.

The doctor removed its hand from its wounded face, bathing Joseph and the surrounding hallway in blood red light as it reached out to grab him with its lethal, inhumanly elongated hand.

He crawled away from it as fast as he could. When he felt the cold brush of one of its fingers against his leg he kicked at the creature’s outstretched hand. One of his kicks hit it just enough to make the Doctor flinch, and Joseph managed to scamper away and get back to his feet.

The doctor let out an enraged yell and came after him. Its dark red light continued to stay pinned right on Joseph as he attempted to run away from it. He was starting to truly fear that he wouldn’t be able to escape it this time though. He was too slow, and he was bound to run out of hallway eventually.

He turned a corner, found the hallway littered with abandoned hospital gurneys and wheelchairs, and threw a couple of them behind him as he ran, attempting to block the Doctor’s path, if only for a second. When he glanced behind his shoulder to check the monster’s progress however, he discovered that it was passing straight through the gurneys, as though they were no more substantial than the air around it.

Joseph heard a whimpering sound, the sound that might emerge from a small, frightened creature, and realized with some disgust that the noise had emerged from his own throat. There was no time to feel sorry for himself though, and adrenaline forced him to keep running, if nothing else.

He turned another corner, and then nearly screamed when he saw that it ended in a dead end. He couldn’t turn back now though, not with the Doctor right behind him.

There was a doorway recessed into the wall about halfway down the hall, and he headed towards it, praying as he did that the door wouldn’t prove to be locked.

Thankfully it wasn’t, and he pushed the double doors open with both hands and quickly slammed them closed behind him. He searched the back of the doors for some sort of mechanism or lock that might keep the Doctor out, or at least delay it for a few seconds, but there was nothing. 

He pressed his back to the doors, knowing that his weight would not be enough to keep the creature out, and yet also knowing that he currently had no other option. He scanned the room, hoping that there might be something that he could push against the door to keep it closed; a bed, another gurney; anything. The Doctor would probably float through whatever barricade he managed to construct, but he had to at least  _try_. 

He only caught a brief glimpse of the room, and what he saw did not give him much hope. The room was small and almost completely empty, except for a couple of fully stocked cabinets that had been pushed up against the opposite wall to Joseph. He would not have been able to move them in front of the door in time, and even if he had it quickly became even more impossible than it had already seemed, as the lights in the room flickered and then went out, leaving Joseph in almost complete darkness.

For a moment it seemed as though nothing would happen. Joseph couldn’t see a thing, and could hear nothing but the pounding of his own heart and his shallow, frantic breaths. 

Then the Doctor shoved its blade through the door, right beside Joseph’s head. He screamed as the blade cut into his shoulder with barely any warning at all. The blade slowly pulled back out and Joseph whimpered as his shoulder flared up in pain, joining the rest of his broken body.

He fell to the ground just in time to avoid the Doctor’s next attack, which pierced the door at a height that would have seen Joseph skewered right through the stomach if he hadn’t moved in time.

Red light streamed through the two fresh holes in the door and lit the floor in front of Joseph.

He slammed his eyes shut and pushed his weight against the door. It began to rattle and shake as the Doctor tried to make its way inside. Joseph curled up tighter, and pressed back against the doors as hard as he could, but he knew that it was only a matter of time before the Doctor either managed to push the doors open or stabbed low enough to get Joseph again and do more damage this time.

This was it. He was really going to die here. He made sure to keep his eyes closed. He did not want to see the end when it finally came; did not want to witness his own blood being strewn all over the floor, or to see the Doctor’s blade or hellish red light ever again.

He just wanted it all to be over…

Suddenly the room fell completely silent again. The rattling of the door stopped, as did the furious screams of the Doctor. He felt the soft press of a hand on his shoulder, and Joseph decided that perhaps he would risk opening his eyes after all.

What he saw was enough to make his breath catch in his throat. The Doctor’s red light had disappeared completely, and the pale, flickering fluorescent lighting that had taken its place seemed like a blessing by comparison, and standing right in front of Joseph was one of the most welcome sights he could imagine; Sebastian. Somehow his partner had found him.

Joseph almost cried from relief at the sight of the other man. 

“Joseph,” Sebastian murmured softly as he looked Joseph up and down. “Are you all right?”

Joseph didn’t bother answering. He just threw himself at Sebastian, his hands reaching up to twist in the fabric of Sebastian’s trench coat and his head sinking down to rest on Sebastian’s shoulder. He didn’t care how unseemly it was, or that he was probably getting blood all over his partner’s clothes. He didn’t care what Sebastian might think of him. He was just so glad to see his partner that he couldn’t keep his emotions in check anymore.

After a moment Sebastian’s hands reached up, and very hesitantly wrapped around Joseph and pulled him closer. One of Sebastian’s hands reached up to run gently through Joseph’s hair.

“Hey,” Sebastian murmured, right by Joseph’s ear. “Joseph, it’s going to be all right. I promise. I’m going to make sure that the two of us get out of here. Okay? It’s going to be all right.”

All the while Sebastian’s hand rubbed slowly at Joseph’s back, silently comforting him as much as the other man’s words ever could. Joseph thought that it might be a little selfish of him, but he wanted to savour every touch that Sebastian was willing to give him. He had wanted to be closer to the other man for so long. Being in his arms like this was like something out of a dream. He just wished that it hadn’t taken a nightmare to get them this far.

“Oh god, Sebastian,” Joseph gasped, leaning into his partner’s touch and soaking up every bit of comfort and affection that Sebastian was willing to give him. “I was so scared. I saw you die.”

A small, annoyingly rational part of his mind insisted on pointing out that the man that was now holding him was probably just another hallucination (after all, it wouldn’t be the first time that Joseph had imagined that Sebastian was there when he clearly wasn’t) but he told it to shut up.

He needed this right now. Even if Sebastian’s touch wasn’t real he just wanted to curl up in the other man’s arms for as long as possible and forget the nightmare that they had both fallen into.

He realised that somewhere along the line he had started to cry, his tears and blood soaking into the heavy tan fabric of Sebastian’s coat, and he pulled back, removing his glasses from his face and tucking them into his vest pocket.

He had barely finished the gesture when Sebastian reached out, his hand gently cupping the side of Joseph’s face. His broad thumb reached up to brush away a tear that was falling down Joseph’s cheek.

The tender gesture surprised Joseph, and for a moment he just stood there, staring in shock at his partner. Sebastian stared back at him, his focus completely on Joseph, and the love that Joseph saw on his partner’s face took his breath away.

“After the church I…” Sebastian began, his hand still on Joseph’s face. He ducked his head, apparently too nervous to look Joseph in the eye.

“I was afraid that I was never going to see you again,” Sebastian said, lifting his head by the end of the confession, and Joseph smiled softly as he realised that the man in front of him, despite how strong and sullen he often seemed, was actually blushing.

Joseph reached up to place his hand on top of the one that Sebastian still held pressed against Joseph’s face. He then closed his eyes and nuzzled into Sebastian’s palm.

“I was worried about you too,” he whispered into the rough skin of Sebastian’s hand.

Perhaps he was being a little too bold, but if Sebastian was at all uncomfortable with how affectionate they were both being then he was doing a terrible job of showing it.

Joseph was still pressing into the comforting warmth of Sebastian’s hand when he felt the man’s other arm snake further around his waist and pull him closer, so that their bodies were pressed flush against one another.

“I was afraid that I would never get the chance to…” Sebastian continued.

He was staring right at Joseph’s mouth, and Joseph flushed when he realised what Sebastian might be about to do.

“… to tell you…” Sebastian continued.

They were both leaning closer to one another, Sebastian tilting Joseph’s head back ever so gently, and the few inches difference in height between the two of them had never felt so large before.

Joseph allowed his eyes to flutter gently closed, and then his and Sebastian’s lips were pressing against one another, Sebastian deepening the kiss almost immediately, and making Joseph moan in response to the blatant passion behind Sebastian’s kiss.

Sebastian’s hands felt so firm and real where they pressed into Joseph’s arms, and their mouths fit together so well that it was almost as though they had been crafted for this exact purpose. Joseph felt himself melting against his partner.

This kiss was so perfect, everything that he had ever imagined it would be. He didn’t want it to end. He just wanted to stay like that forever, pressed up against Sebastian, away from all of the chaos and madness that they had both faced so far. Sebastian was amazing, and safe, and the way that he was holding Joseph and kissing him was so good that Joseph found himself whimpering more than once from the pleasure of it. He could feel all of the pain that had been wracking his body slowly disappearing, as though all that it took for him to feel okay once more was the warmth of Sebastian’s arms, and the tender caress of his lips.

They needed to part eventually though, if only to breath, and when they did Joseph saw that Sebastian was just as flushed from the kiss as Joseph was. His eyes were dark as he looked down at Joseph and Joseph wanted nothing more than to just kiss him again, to allow himself to finally lose himself in the other man. He had wanted this for so long, and it was finally happening.

And yet…

Something wasn’t right.

Joseph took a step back and tried to ignore the more primal, lust-crazed part of his mind. They needed to focus. They could kiss one another and hold one another and do all of the other amazing things that he had imagined doing with Sebastian once they were out of there and safe once more.

Sebastian followed Joseph as he moved back, his hands reaching out to wrap around Joseph once more.

“Joseph…” he breathed softly. “I…”

He eyes were still dark, but he looked nervous, and Joseph almost allowed himself to stop thinking once more. If Sebastian was going to say what Joseph thought he was going to say, then…

But no. He had finally worked out what it was that had been bothering him.

“When did you get your jacket back?” he asked Sebastian.

“What?” Sebastian seemed confused.

“Your jacket,” Joseph said. “You didn’t have it when I saw you in the church.”

So either this Sebastian, who held him and kissed him and was far more loving and affectionate than he had ever been outside of this nightmare was not real, or the one that he had travelled to the church with; the one that fought and swore and tackled him wasn’t real, and Joseph knew all too well which one of them had been acting more like the Sebastian Castellanos that he knew and loved.

Sebastian, or the figment of Joseph’s imagination that looked like Sebastian, or whatever the hell it was that had just kissed Joseph, paused, and looked incredibly confused and just a little hurt for all of a few seconds, before a giant claw tore through the door and plunged itself into Sebastian’s body from behind.

Joseph screamed as Sebastian was immediately impaled on the Doctor’s long claws. Sebastian managed to look up at Joseph, the same mix of confusion and hurt on his face, before he went completely limp.

Joseph waited for the Doctor to come bursting through the door and into the room, but it seemed to be content now that it had taken care of Sebastian, and it didn’t even more, not even its claw. Sebastian stayed right where he was, impaled on the ghost’s claws in a manner than was strangely reminiscent of the time that Joseph had found a facsimile of his partner pinned to a wall.

The light flickered out again, plunging the room once more into darkness, and taking the body of Sebastian and the horrible clawed hand with it, leaving Joseph alone, surrounded by nothing but the dark, and with no clue of where he actually was.

He sobbed, and looked down at his hands. He could see himself perfectly fine. There was no problem there, although his vision was starting to get rather blurred from his tears. He had known that the Sebastian that had kissed him was nothing more than another of this place’s terrible illusions, but that didn’t stop the sight of the man he loved being horribly murdered it front of him from being just a little too much for him to handle.

He couldn’t take this anymore; the fear and the torment. His emotions had been twisted and manipulated so much that he couldn’t do anything except drop to the ground and cry, and wish for it to all be over.

The taunting sound of Ruvik’s laughter emerged from somewhere in the darkness.

Joseph blinked and looked over his shoulder to find the pale man standing there, watching him with a small grin on his twisted and burned face. Joseph felt his hands clenching into fists by his side. He wanted to attack this man, to shoot him in the face or strangle him with his bare hands, but Joseph had the feeling that nothing he would be able to do to the spectral psychopath would do any good.

“Why would you show me that!?” Joseph yelled at the other man. “What the hell was in that for you?”

“I didn’t show you anything,” Ruvik said. “As amusing as it has been to watch you fall so deeply into despair, it would be dishonest of me to take too much credit.”

“What do you want from me!?” Joseph screamed.

“From you?” Ruvik replied, smirking as he did. “What makes you think that I want anything from you? You are nothing but an accident; a fly in the ointment. The only reason I have not yet killed you is because I want to see the look on Detective Castellanos’ face when he is forced to watch you being torn apart in front of him.”

“Why do you keep doing this to us!?”

“I told you; I have done very little to you Detective. I introduced you to the Keeper, but everything else? All of this? That’s all been you and your partner and Kidman and all of the other insects that have been pulled into Jimenez’s monstrosity.”

“Bullshit.”

Ruvik just laughed.

“I have left you mostly to your own devices, but if you insist on seeing my own capabilities, then I think I can oblige, my dear Joseph.”

And then Ruvik disappeared completely. Joseph was wise enough to the ways of Ruvik’s world now that he knew it did not mean that the other man was gone. Far from it. Ruvik had promised to show Joseph what he could do, and Joseph knew that the other man was not going to leave without doing precisely that.

The world seemed to break for a moment; to flicker in and out of existence like static on an old screen, before it resettled in a different form to the one it had held before. The building he had previously been inside disappeared completely. Instead he was standing in a suburban street than seemed perfectly normal at first glance, until he recognised his own house and realised that it had been placed right in between Sebastian’s house and the one in which he had lived with Marie and Amy. In real life the three houses hadn’t even been in the same neighbourhoods, much less the same street.

And at the very end of the street, in the far distance, he could see a rather familiar building; Beacon Mental Hospital. It was closer than it had been when he had seen it before, but it still seemed so far off. What was this place? If this was all in his mind then why did he keep seeing Beacon Mental Hospital?

More amazing than that however was the fact that all of his wounds seemed to have disappeared. He wasn’t sure whether it was being held by Sebastian that had healed him, or something that Ruvik had done, but all of the wounds in his side and leg and shoulder had suddenly disappeared, along with the tears in his clothing and the sticky liquid that had seemed to cover his entire body.

He was still conscious of the fact that Ruvik was in control though, so he felt rather wary as he continued to survey the street. He decided that he should at least check out the nearby buildings, and headed towards the one in which he had lived with Amy and Marie, only because it was the closest.

There was ammunition waiting for him at the front door, which was oddly convenient, but he didn’t want to question it, and stopped for a moment to reload his pistol before opening the front door, making sure that he would be ready to fight if the undead things or any other monsters were waiting inside.

Instead he stopped short as he found himself witnessing a rather normal looking scene. His ex-wife was standing in the sitting room and kneeling in front of their daughter.

“Marie?” he tried calling out, but neither she nor the young girl responded. They could not hear him.

“No sweetie,” Marie muttered quietly to their daughter. “Your father isn’t a good man. You don’t want to see him.”

Joseph almost let out a groan at that, at the cheesiness and obviously manipulative nature of the scene.

“Really?” he called out to the room in general, but intending for the words to reach Ruvik in particular. “We’re doing this now are we? I have to say, I expected more from you Ruvik.”

Yes, he was divorced, and yes, Marie had retained custody of their daughter, but it had been a decision that they had mutually come to through polite and civilised discourse. Joseph was a detective after all. His job was dangerous and between that and babysitting his drunken wreck of a partner, he had been out at all hours of the night by the time he and Marie had finally split. He was not the best potential father for any child. He knew that, and he also knew that Marie was far too mature and sensible to hold that against him.

Even the divorce itself had been as civilised and mutual a decision as it could have possibly been, and as far as Joseph was aware neither of them had any hard feelings over the matter. Ruvik was really grasping at straws if he thought that this would have any effect on him.

“But why?” Amy asked her mother. “What did he do?”

“Oh sweetie,” Marie said, wrapping her arms around her daughter and pulling her close. “You don’t want to know. Trust me, you don’t…”

“But is he with Uncle Seb?” Amy asked. “Uncle Seb is going to keep him safe, right? Even if Daddy has been bad? They’re going to look after each other right? You said that they always look after each other.”

And that was when the scene stopped making sense to Joseph, because Marie’s reaction to that was to pull Amy as close as she possibly could and bury her face in their daughter’s hair and shoulder.

Joseph had never once seen Marie cry in all the years they had been married. It was such a strange sight that it left Joseph feeling rather uncomfortable. What had Amy said that had upset her mother so much?

Joseph tried calling out to Marie and Amy again, and then moved closer to them, attempting to place a hand on his daughter’s shoulder and finding himself disappointed, although not surprised, when his hand passed through as though either himself or his daughter was not solid. He was apparently not allowed to interact with these scenes in any manner.

That suited him fine, and he sighed to himself as he left the house. He bypassed his own completely, figuring that if there was going to be anything really bad then it would be waiting for him in his partner’s house. It was probably best to get it over with as quickly as possible.

This time he hesitated a little at the door. There had been too many painful memories in this house as it was; ones that he really would have preferred that Ruvik didn’t get to witness.

His hand shook as he reached up to open the door. He took a deep breath, tried to will his fear away and then turned the door knob. The door was unlocked, just as his old house had been. Somehow he knew that it would be.

Joseph’s stomach lurched as he smelled the now far-too-familiar scent of whiskey. After his recent dip in the pool he had a feeling that he wouldn’t want to catch a whiff of the alcohol any time soon. He reached an arm up so that his sleeve partially covered the scent, while his other clutched tightly at his pistol.

He half expected to find a blood-stained and violent tableau like the one he had left behind in the pool, but when he made his way into the sitting room he just saw Sebastian sitting there on the couch, staring down at his hands in what looked like shock.

As Joseph grew closer he discovered where the smell had come from. The remains of what had once been a bottle of whiskey lay shattered on the table in front of Sebastian, and there were shards of glass and splashes of whiskey all over the place. A couple of pieces of glass had caught Sebastian on his hands and lower arms; leaving a few cuts. The cuts weren’t too bad; certainly not life threatening; but Joseph was seized by the urge to run over and treat Sebastian’s injuries as soon as possible.

He had only made it a couple of steps before Sebastian spoke however, his words making Joseph freeze in place.

“Jesus fucking Christ Joseph,” Sebastian muttered as he slowly, carefully flexed his fingers.

“Sebastian?” Joseph called out, wondering if perhaps, unlike his wife and daughter, his partner was actually capable of seeing him. He wanted to ask Sebastian if he was all right; whether he needed treatment or anything of the like, but Sebastian didn’t respond to the sound of his voice or even look up from the cuts on his hands.

“I wasn’t going to,” Sebastian murmured softly. “I wasn’t…”

The scene flickered and then froze, as though Joseph was watching a scene that had just been put on pause.

“That’s it?” Joseph asked. He had mostly been intending to address Ruvik, but he would have gladly accepted a response from Sebastian had he seen fit to give Joseph one, but instead his partner just continued to sit there on the couch and stare down at his hands.

There was no response from Ruvik, but the entire world flickered and shifted, as though it was shrugging in resignation. Joseph sighed, and prepared himself for whatever was to come next. If those first two scenarios were anything to go by then it might not be that bad. Maybe Ruvik was nothing more than hot air and not really all that threatening after all.

The world shifted around him, turning into one of the offices in the K.C.P.D. headquarters. Kidman was standing in front of Sebastian, one of her hands on her hip. They both looked angry.

“He’s dangerous Sebastian,” Kidman was telling the older detective.

Sebastian scoffed and turned away from her.

“You don’t know what he’s capable of,” she continued. “I do.”

Joseph instinctively knew that they were talking about him. It was far too easy a scene for Joseph to imagine; irrationally so. Joseph shuddered as he recalled the feeling of his hands around Kidman’s neck.

 _She is going to take him…_ The memory of Ruvik’s words echoed in his ear.

But that was preposterous, wasn’t it? Kidman was their junior officer. She wasn’t going to…

But if she did?

The scene in front of him paused then, both Kidman and Sebastian freezing halfway through gesturing. Joseph caught the sight of Ruvik hovering next to him, just out of the corner of his eye. One of the pale man’s hands gently pressed against Joseph’s shoulder, the touch cold and clammy.

“What would you do to keep him?” Ruvik asked. Joseph’s eyes were fixed on Sebastian, where he was frozen, mid-way through turning his back on Kidman, one hand stuck part way through dismissing Kidman and what she had been saying.

What would he do? Joseph was more worried by the thought of what he _wouldn’t_ do. It was a depressingly short list.

“You have already demonstrated that you are willing to kill for him,” Ruvik continued.

“To protect him,” Joseph argued.

Ruvik sniggered in response to that.

“And how do you protect a man from himself?” Ruvik asked.

This scene faded away, disappearing much more slowly than the previous one.

Joseph stood there, watching it until it had faded completely. What was this? He had been expecting Ruvik to torment him with monsters like the Keeper, and the Doctor, and those horrible, undead people, but this…? He felt as though Ruvik was quietly analysing him, poking him and prodding him to see what made him tick, gathering up ammunition for an attack that, when it eventually came, would surely prove to be worse than anything else he had faced so far.

The light seemed to leave the area slowly, until it was completely gone, and when it came back Joseph found himself standing in a long, wide hallway. The light was now a harsh shade of red, and the hallway was lined with faded photos that had been blown up and placed on the walls at seemingly random locations.

He paused in front of one to take a look. It was a photo of himself and Sebastian. They were both sitting at Sebastian’s desk. Papers were scattered all over the place. Joseph was leaning on the table smiling, and Sebastian appeared to be laughing at something that Joseph had said.

He remembered this night. They had stayed in the office until late, finishing off the paperwork from their latest case. It had been a good night, memorable only because it was the last good night they had enjoyed together before everything had gone to shit. There certainly hadn’t been any photos.

The next showed Sebastian with his arm slung around the shoulders of a mildly annoyed-looking Joseph; their first collar together as partners; and the next Joseph with his arms wrapped tightly around Sebastian’s back as the older man cried into his shoulder, Joseph managing to look just as upset as Sebastian, even though he was not shedding any tears.

All of the photos were of his memories with Sebastian. Not all of them were good. Some of them took the form of real photos that had been taken at certain events; Sebastian and Myra’s wedding, himself and Sebastian playing with a two year old Lily; but most were of smaller events that held no importance except that which Joseph had assigned to them.

When Joseph reached the end of the hallway and the double-doored fire exit there he found a single photo waiting for him. It was a simple one; himself and Sebastian smiling for the camera after a successful case. Joseph couldn’t even remember which one it had been.

One line had been written on the photo, in dark, hastily scrawled letters.

‘YOU CANNOT SAVE HIM.’

Joseph reached out and snatched the photo from its place on the door, letting it fall to the ground beside him.

Did Ruvik really think he was going to be able to get to Joseph that easily?

He scoffed and reached out to open the fire exit doors with both hands.


	10. The Protected

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who stuck around for this chapter, especially to those who left me encouraging messages. They really helped. Don't worry. I have no intentions of giving up on this fic.
> 
> I find that in any longer work there is inevitably one chapter that gives me troubles. For Definitely Not Okay it was this chapter. I had a very specific vision in mind for the character you're about to meet, and I wanted to do that vision justice. I don't know how successful I've been, but I needed to finally get this chapter out there in the world. I know you're probably all going to hate me for the cliffhanger at the end of this one, but I promise you that the next chapter will be up a lot quicker than this one was.
> 
> And so, without further ado; here is chapter 10.

CHAPTER TEN: The Protected

As the doors opened Joseph was greeted by the noise of what sounded like metal scraping along a hard surface. Joseph winced at the sound. It wasn’t the door; it clearly came from something further within the room. He didn’t think it was the Doctor that he was hearing either. No, the sound was too low. Whatever was making the noise, he didn’t think that it was any sort of blade, but rather something much heavier and more solid.

The room beyond the door had been in pitch darkness until the moment that Joseph stepped inside. He winced again as several lines of fluorescent lights flickered into life. Some of them didn’t quite make it, and continued to flicker on and off as he surveyed his new surroundings.

The space in front of him was large and constructed primarily of concrete. Joseph might have guessed that it had spent at least part of its existence functioning as a car-park, if it wasn’t for the fact that the room was round, and he couldn’t see any sort of entrance or exit except for the double doors that he had just come through. Thick, round cement pillars held up a ceiling that seemed almost impossibly high above him.

The flickering fluorescent lighting revealed a setting that was both hauntingly familiar and absolutely horrifying. What had first appeared to be a random selection of furniture and objects spread throughout the space in a jumbled, chaotic mix soon revealed itself as being made up entirely of things that were familiar to Joseph, all of which followed the same morbid theme. There was Sebastian’s couch, and there, on the other side of the room, another exact copy of it. There was the coffee table that usually sat in front of it, and over there the book cases that usually sat in the room’s corners had been pushed over, leaving the books within to fall all over the ground, where they soaked up liquid and slowly fell to pieces.

And everywhere, placed all around the edges of the room and stuck at seemingly random places on the large concrete pillars, were replicas of Sebastian’s television. The screens all flickered to life as Joseph glanced around the room. A couple of them showed some sort of old black and white thriller, while others displayed a corrupted digital signal that showed up as little more than patches of broken colour, and still others showed loud black and white static, this last being highly unlikely considering the television in question was a relatively recent digital-only model.

Joseph was almost overwhelmed by the noise of dozens of television screens blaring at him at the same time, but not so much that he couldn’t focus on the rest of the room’s grizzly display. There were bodies everywhere, and he approached the nearest one with trepidation.

The body was broken and covered in blood, and the face was damaged enough to be unrecognisable, but for Joseph at least there was no mistaking that body, or the clothes that it wore. Joseph was staring down at the broken body of his partner, or at least something that had been made to look exactly like Sebastian.

He might have been worried by the sight, if it hadn’t been for the number of times that Ruvik and this strange world had already tried to show him images of Sebastian’s death, or the fact that the body he now stood in front of was only one of many.

There were dead Sebastians all over the damn room. A few metres away one lay over a copy of the other man’s couch, his back broken at an angle that made it hard for Joseph to stop himself from retching, and over there one had been hung by a dark metal stake through the hand to one of the concrete pillars. All of them wore Sebastian’s clothes, and all of them were either mutilated or placed in such a way as to hide Sebastian’s face.

“What the hell is this?” Joseph muttered, more to himself than because he thought he would receive any sort of reply.

The world wasn’t even trying to make sense anymore. There was no possible way that they could _all_ be Sebastian, so what the hell was the point in taunting him like this? He wasn’t even scared by the sight of so many dead Sebastians; disturbed, yes, and mildly disgusted, but the sight was just so surreal and over-the-top that instead of fear he found himself gripped by a cold sort of emotional numbness.

A large, dark shape stood in the center of the room. At first it had seemed like nothing more than a mass of broken metal and flesh, standard decor for this place, but as Joseph drew closer the other thing moved and Joseph realised that it was alive. As he slowly made his way even closer to the large shape and his eyes grew more used to the harsh, flickering lights, he started to make out more detail.

A large cage, easily twice the height of a man, had been chained to the pillars and the ceiling with thick, heavy chains that rattled gently. There was something caught within the cage though; something that appeared to have outgrown the confines of it’s prison and was now far too large to be enclosed in such a manner. Long limbs and clumps of hair and fabric stuck out of the cage at odd, uncomfortable-looking angles. There was a soft, deep rumbling that sounded like the harsh breathing of whatever giant beast lay within.

Joseph knew that he should probably leave whatever it was alone, but he felt drawn to it for some unimaginable reason, and he approached it slowly, moving as quietly as he could.

In patches the ground was covered with some sort of thick, sticky liquid. Joseph didn’t want to think too hard about what exactly the liquid was. He was already having uncomfortable enough flashbacks to both his painful swim through the alcoholic pool and to at least one stressful night at Sebastian’s house, without lingering too long on what exactly it was that was currently soaking the hems of his pants. He stepped in a couple of puddles as he approached the thing in the center of the room, and the tiny splashes and dripping noises that his footfalls left behind him seemed to echo impossibly loud in the large space, even making themselves heard above the sounds of the televisions and the beast in front of him.

The beast was in such a mess that it was almost impossible to tell, but Joseph thought he could make out two long, clawed arms. He assumed that there were two legs trapped inside the cage, but between poor lighting and how distorted and mutilated the creature in front of him appeared, it was hard to tell for sure. A tangled head of dark hair pressed against the side of the cage, and the creature fixed Joseph with one large, brown eye that would have seemed all too human if it wasn’t for it’s monstrous size. The other eye, along with most of the creature’s face, had been covered by some sort of thick leather mask, and as Joseph grew closer he could see that the rest of the creature’s form was covered in a mixture of tattered old rags and bandages.

He had seen those clothes before, he realised, in the lead up to the church, hanging lifelessly from random pieces of metal or dancing in a non-existent breeze. What the hell was this? Was his own mind playing tricks on him again, or had those pieces of fabric and twisted metal been merely warning him of what was to come?

Between the bandages and the metal, everywhere Joseph looked, the Protected (because somehow Joseph understood that was the creature’s name) seemed to have been pierced by sharp pieces of metal and shards of broken glass. They looked painful, and yet Joseph felt that they were as much a part of the creature as it’s twisted limbs or the mask that covered it’s face. They had clearly been embedded in the creature’s skin for a long time. They were _meant_ to be there, just as the Protected was meant to be in the cage.

Joseph kept his gun at the ready as he approached the creature. The chains keeping the Protected caged and in place seemed sturdy enough, at least for the time being, but if there was one thing that this place had taught him it was that he should never take such things for granted.

Against his better judgement Joseph slowly reached out to the creature. The Protected pressed against the bars of its cage, and reached for Joseph with one long, distended hand. Joseph leapt back from the creature’s touch. Each of the Protected’s fingers was about as long as one of his legs, and each of its claws was hooked, sharp and long, like a scythe blade.

The Protected let out a long, mournful howl and suddenly began to thrash, at least as much as it possibly could when it was so confined. The metal cage rattled and clanked against the concrete below. The lights above began to flicker even more than they had before. A fifties heroine let out a loud, high-pitched scream from one of the nearby televisions, and from another direction Joseph was sure that he heard Ruvik’s laughter.

His first instinct was to run far away from the creature, as fast as his legs could possibly carry him. He could see no reason to not listen to this instinct, and so he ran, not even taking a second to look behind him. 

The cage had looked quite heavy. Surely the creature could barely move. He heard a scraping and clanging sound behind him though, like heavy metal being dragged quickly over a concrete floor, and risked a quick glance behind him only to find that the Protected was struggling against it’s confines, and it appeared to be winning.

Joseph thought that he had started to run straight towards the door through which he had entered the room, but he soon discovered the door had disappeared, leaving nothing but a stained patch of plain concrete in it’s wake.

“Oh come on!” he screamed as he looked around for another way out.

Behind him, the Protected continued to scream and strain against the chains that kept it in place. As Joseph watched one of the chains snapped completely and fell to the floor with a loud ‘clang’. The Protected continued to strain, and it wasn’t long before a second and a third chain joined the first.

Joseph glanced around for anything that might help him combat such a creature, but there was no way out, and he had nothing but his handgun.

The Protected let out one last howl and pushed all of it’s strength into its next attempt. The rest of its chains tore or dislodged completely from the concrete in one go, sending chunks of concrete and bits of broken metal falling to the ground around it. A couple of the chains smashed nearby televisions as they fell to the ground, sending shards of glass and sparks in all directions. One of the sparks set a nearby pool of liquid on fire.

The Protected reared up with another mighty roar, the fire lighting the area behind it. Joseph still wasn’t sure the creature was entirely capable of movement, but within seconds it had proved him wrong and was pulling itself across the floor with its two long, bladed hands. To Joseph’s horror it seemed to be heading straight for him.

Joseph cursed and ducked around a corner, then, as quickly as he could he ran behind a tattered and blood-stained facsimile of Sebastian’s couch and huddled behind it, hoping that he might be able to hide from the creature.

He heard the clanking and the scraping stop for a moment and peaked around the side of the couch. The thing had stopped right beside him, and was frantically searching the nearby area, turning over tables and crushing boxes in its effort to find him.

It stopped for a moment and let out another loud, mournful howl before it started to shuffle along again.

Joseph let out a breath that he didn’t realise he had been holding, and then leaned against the back of the couch only for Ruvik to suddenly appear out of nowhere right in front of him. The pale man stood silently above Joseph, glaring down at him as though something that Joseph had done displeased him.

Ruvik extended an arm towards Joseph, and then the couch behind him flew back, exploding into a thousand fragments. Pieces of wood and leather smacked Joseph in the back of his head and arms, and he looked around, panicking when he realised that he was out in the open and vulnerable once more.

When Joseph turned back he found that Ruvik had disappeared just as quickly as he had first appeared, but the couch’s destruction had attracted the attention of the Protected, and it whirled around, fixing Joseph with one large eye before lumbering towards him once more.

Joseph cursed Ruvik and the creature and started to run once more. He kept an eye out for any sort of exit from the hellhole in which he had found himself as he ran, but none appeared.

He ducked behind a thick concrete pylon, but he only managed to lose the Protected for a few seconds before one long, clawed hand reached out to dig into the concrete above him, the bulk of the creature soon appearing beside him.

Joseph screamed as the monster reached out towards him with its other hand; its long, sharp claws large and strong enough to crush his head like a grape if it so wished.

Joseph searched around himself for anything that he might be able to use as a weapon against the creature. His eyes alighted on a nearby bottle, and with no hesitation at all he picked up the glass bottle and smashed it against the creature’s arm. The Protected’s skin was thick however, and it did not appear to be at all injured by the bottle, not even when Joseph attempted to stab it with the sharp, broken half that remained after the first attack. The glass almost seemed to crumble when faced with the Protected’s hard skin. It was enough to make the creature flinch though, and it pulled back for a moment, looking at Joseph as though the attack had surprised it.

Joseph took advantage of the moment of confusion to get a head start on the creature, running away from it once more as fast as his legs could carry him.

It wasn’t long before it was coming after him again though, and judging by the sounds that reached his ears it was moving even faster than before. He ducked behind one of the television screens, finding a gap in the wall which was just large enough for him to hide in. He wasn’t particularly well hidden, but the couch had been enough to confuse the Protected before, so it didn’t seem to be all that bright, and even if it did find him the screen might be enough to block its claws.

Joseph could just see the bottom of the creature as it crawled past, leaving him alone in his hiding place. Good; he had actually managed to hide from it again. Now he just needed to sneak around the monster and find a way out of this place. Maybe he could climb the screens and furniture and make a hole in the ceiling.

His thought process had not gotten any further however when Ruvik appeared in front of him once more, even though there should not have been enough space for the both of them in Joseph’s little safe haven.

He looked even more annoyed with Joseph this time, and even took a moment to roll his eyes in disdain, before he reached out and sent the television screen flying across the room in a mess of sparks and broken glass.

“You need to face what you’ve done, Detective,” Ruvik said, before disappearing once more.

Joseph cursed as the Protected spotted him immediately and began to lumber over towards him.

He was pinned, and without any form of protection except his small pistol, and he doubted it’s bullets would even be strong enough to pierce the creature’s skin. There was no way that he was going to be able to squeeze out of his hiding space before…

The creature came to a stop right in front of Joseph. He was stuck with a concrete wall at his back and a monster right in front of his face. The Protected snuffled at him for a moment before reaching into the hole in the wall with one of its long, distended hands.

Joseph shot the monster’s hand a couple of times, but it was not enough to even slow down the calm, relentless movement of the hand as it reached out and wrapped itself around Joseph’s torso. Joseph struggled and tried to escape, but its grip was like an iron vice. He reached down with both hands and tried to pry off one of its claws, but he only succeeded in cutting the soft leather of his gloves and the softer skin of his hands on the razor sharp ridges of its fingers.

The creature’s hold was surprisingly gentle as it pulled Joseph towards him. It was hard for Joseph to find any comfort in that fact though; not when the creature’s body was covered in razor sharp shards of metal and glass that glistened in the flickering light from the monitors that surrounded them. If the creature pulled Joseph any closer, which it looked as though it was trying to do, then he would be impaled on those shards, torn to shreds in the Protected’s deadly embrace.

“No, no, no!” he screamed, struggling helplessly against the creature’s grip. He had to find a way out of this, and fast.

He eyes landed on the damp ground below them. The creature was currently standing in one of the many large puddles of amber liquid that Joseph had noticed when he had first entered the room. 

He checked his pistol and his vest pocket, and sighed in relief when he noted that he still had five bullets left. If he was smart then that would be more than enough to get him out of this.

He aimed up towards the ceiling, where the flourescent lights were still flickering on and off. He picked the one that looked as though it was closest to being directly above them, lined up his shot, and fired.

The light fell to the ground in a shower of sparks. Joseph had already tried this trick once and been successful. He could only hope that it worked as well against the Protected as it had against the Keeper.

He held his breath for what felt like ages, but was, in reality only a couple of seconds as he waited for the sparks to light the pool below them on fire.

The flame that was soon birthed from the puddle beneath them burned even brighter and hotter than Joseph had hoped, and within moments it was travelling up the creature’s legs, licking at the bars of its cage and singeing the scraps of fabric that dangled from its edges.

The Protected howled, its scream echoing throughout the chamber, and it dropped Joseph, finally letting him fall to the ground. He rolled away from the fire as he landed, and stood there, simply watching as the creature was engulfed in flames.

A quick check of his own torso revealed that he had sustained little more than a few bruises and shallow cuts where the thing’s claws had grabbed at him. It could have been a lot worse really. It almost had been.

The Protected writhed, a high-pitched, disturbingly human mix of whimpers and cries emerging from its throat as the fire almost completely engulfed it. It writhed, and thrashed, and Joseph began to think that it might still be dangerous, despite the fire.

He aimed his pistol and shot once… twice… three times into the fire. He was reasonably sure that each bullet hit, and before long, between the fire and the bullets the creature had collapsed, falling to the ground in a pile of chains and broken glass and charred flesh.

Ruvik appeared beside him once more as Joseph was walking towards the creature’s prone form.

“What do you want?” Joseph snapped angrily at him.

Ruvik grinned at him.

“Just to watch,” he told Joseph.

“You did a lot more than watch while I was fighting that thing,” Joseph fired back. “I thought you weren’t going to kill me. I thought you had some grand plan to watch Sebastian and I tear each other apart or some other twisted…”

Ruvik started to chuckle before Joseph had even finished speaking.

“You needed to face this Joseph,” Ruvik told him. “I didn’t want you cowering in safety when you could be dealing with your issues head on. It’s not healthy.”

Joseph didn’t see what was so funny. Then again, he was reasonably sure he would never be able to understand Ruvik, or his twisted sense of humour.

They were only a couple of feet away from the creature now. It had almost stopped moving, and was doing little more than lying on the ground, one arm stretched out towards Joseph, and moaning softly in pain, but Joseph was loathe to lower his pistol just yet.

He crouched down so that he could get a closer look at the monster he had just fought. The burns seemed to have engulfed most of its skin, turning what had been a sickly, pale greenish-brown into a mangled mess of exposed flesh and blackened skin.

The hand that was closest to Joseph twitched and tried to move closer to the detective. The creature however proved too weak for the task, and it whimpered as its claw fell back down on the floor only a few inches closer to Joseph than where it had started.

The mask that had covered its face had been burned to shreds, and as Joseph watched, the last scraps of it fell from the monster’s head and landed in the mess of ash and liquid which now surrounded the Protected. Thanks to the mask the fire had left large patches of the skin on its head completely untouched, and what had lain beneath the thick black leather was enough to send shivers down Joseph’s spine.

That face; it was twisted and broken, but not beyond recognition. Those brown eyes; he had known that they were familiar.

He was now looking at the face of Sebastian Castellanos; or rather, what his partner might have looked like after he had suffered the same tortures as the poor Haunted that he and Joseph had been fighting this entire time.

Oh no. Oh god no. He couldn’t have… This couldn’t be Sebastian. This couldn’t be real.

This was all another one of Ruvik’s tricks. It had to be.

He whirled around to find the hooded man simply watching the two of them, that infuriatingly familiar amused grin of his having returned to his face.

“What have you done to him!?” Joseph demanded.

“I didn’t do anything to him,” Ruvik replied “You did this.”

“I didn’t know that it was him,” Joseph argued. “How could I when he was… When you… Oh god, Sebastian. No.”

“You think I meant the fire?” Ruvik said, and now he actually laughed, a loud, deep rumble that echoed around the room and sent shivers of fear down Joseph’s spine. The laughter sounded as though it came from everywhere at once, and Joseph had a feeling that if he turned around now then he would find that Ruvik was nowhere to be seen. He couldn’t bring himself to turn and look though, not when this broken facsimile of Sebastian lay in front of him, pain and fear and betrayal etched all over his face as he stared at Joseph.

Joseph reached out slowly to touch Sebastian, but fear still held him back from actually pressing his fingers to the tortured flesh on Sebastian’s face.

“This was all you Joseph,” Ruvik’s voice continued to taunt him. “This room. That cage. You did all of this; not me. It was your sick, twisted mind that did that to your poor, precious Sebastian. I am simply an observer.”

“Why would I…? I’d never… I’d never hurt him. Not like this.”

“Wouldn’t you?” Ruvik asked him.

Ruvik let out one last, long, haunting laugh, before his voice disappeared completely, leaving Joseph alone with the poor, broken creature in front of him.

He ran his hand through dark, matted hair, and pushed it aside to reveal scarred, burnt flesh, and a pale brown eye that was far too familiar.

“I wouldn’t,” he whispered, more to himself than to the creature.

Wouldn’t he though?

Part of him already knew that Ruvik had been telling the truth; that this was something that had been pulled from his mind and no-one else’s, and he had a feeling that he knew exactly what it was that he was looking at.

It was something that he had always been afraid of, as soon as he had realised that this particular darkness lurked within him.

What he would do to Sebastian if he was given the chance.

_I would lock you up, for your own protection of course. I would make it so that no-one would ever be able to look at you again. You would be mine Sebastian, only mine, if only because I know that I wouldn’t be able to trust anyone else with you._

_And anyone that had managed to hurt you before now? Well, I would tear them to shreds, revel in their screams and present their broken hearts and bodies to you as trophies, as a show of my affection. It would not matter who they were or if you had cared for them once. If they hurt you then clearly they are not worthy of your affection._

_Perhaps it would be best if you didn’t remember any of them then. I would not want you to shed tears for those who have only hurt you._

_Yes, I would tear those memories from your head; make it so that there was nothing for you but me. Only me. No-one else._

_And you, Protected, for all of eternity._

_Just you and me, alone in the darkness._

There was a part of him, deep down inside, that recognised the monster for what it was. There was some truth behind those thoughts after all. It was not a truth that Joseph was particularly proud of, or one that he even wanted to acknowledge at all. It was just the deepest, darkest, ugliest part of him, this sick twisted desire to take Sebastian and mold him into something that he could never, should never, be.

“I’m so sorry,” Joseph told the Protected.

He shuffled closer to the creature and wrapped his arms around what parts of it he could reach through the bars and around the glass and metal that were embedded it its body. He knew now that this was not really Sebastian. There was no way that it could be. It, like so many other things in this messed up world in which they had found themselves, was just a figment of his own twisted imagination.

But right now, even knowing that truth didn’t make the heavy weight of the creature in his arms any less real.

The Protected whimpered as Joseph continued to pet its hair and whisper quiet words. He hoped that he was able to at least give the creature in his arms some level of comfort as it died. Despite himself Joseph realised that he had begun to cry, although whether it was for the poor creature in his arms or just from all of the stress and the pain that he had been suffering, he had no idea.

Protected Sebastian looked up at Joseph, betrayal and pain in its fading eyes, and then, as Joseph tried to wipe the tears from his eyes, the creature smiled softly at Joseph for the first time.

“Joseph…” Sebastian whispered, before his eyes closed and his body went completely limp in Joseph’s arms.

The voice may have been broken, but without the mask it was still recognisably Sebastian’s, and Joseph let the tears fall freely from his eyes then. He closed his eyes and clung to the creature as much as he could, crying and crying until he thought he couldn’t cry any more.

 

* * *

 

When he finally opened his eyes he found that the creature and the large room in which he had fought it were gone completely. Instead he found himself sitting in a perfect replica of Sebastian’s sitting room. Well, it had to be a replica, didn’t it; one pulled from his memory or something; because there was no way that he could suddenly be in Sebastian’s actual living room.

The television screen was buzzing static at him, and in his arms lay the far too still and disturbingly normal-looking form of Sebastian Castellanos.

Joseph pulled back in shock. There were bullet wounds in Sebastian’s chest. Three bullet wounds.

And when he lifted his hands to inspect them he found that his hands were covered in blood. Sebastian’s blood.

But no... This wasn’t possible.

There was no way that he could have...

His eyes darted between his blood-stained hands and the unmoving form of Sebastian where he lay on the floor.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no…

There was no way that he could have…

But Ruvik had manipulated things before. He had changed it so that Joseph had seen things that weren’t there before now. He had made Juli Kidman seem like a monster in Joseph’s eyes. Surely he could do the same thing with Sebastian.

But no. Joseph couldn’t have. He couldn’t have…

But there were three bullet wounds in Sebastian’s chest; the same amount of bullets that Joseph had shot at the Protected.

“Oh god no… Seb, no…”

Joseph didn’t know how long it was that he had been muttering to himself. All he knew was that he had just committed the worst crime imaginable. It didn’t matter whether Ruvik had tricked him into it or not.

He couldn’t… He couldn’t deal with this. He couldn’t go on, not when he knew that he had…

He had thought that he was all out of tears, but he proved himself wrong as painful, wracked sobs began to emerge from his throat, sending a fresh wave of tears spilling down his cheeks.

He wrapped his arms around himself, his blood-stained hands clutching at the now completely undamaged fabric of his shirt and chest, and pressing against the skin of his completely uninjured torso beneath.

His eyes alighted on the pistol that lay between himself and Sebastian’s body, and he scrambled for it without a second thought. He grabbed the pistol, stood up and took one last look at Sebastian’s body, before pressing the barrel of the gun to the side of his head.

He couldn’t be allowed to live anymore. He wasn’t sure that he could without Sebastian anyway.

He pulled the trigger with no hesitation whatsoever.

He saw a flash of Ruvik, standing behind Sebastian’s couch and grinning at him, right before everything went black.


	11. Control

When Joseph woke up his first thought was that it had all been nothing more than a nightmare. He must have fallen asleep while sitting at his desk in the K.C.P.D. office that he shared with Sebastian, perhaps while attending to some particularly boring paperwork. It was the only explanation. After all, he wasn’t in any sort of nightmarish hell-scape now that he was awake. He was sitting at his desk; his perfectly normal, harmless desk.

Only he couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something about the office that was off somehow. The light that streamed through the windows was the same golden shade that it often was in the late afternoon, his desk had the same scratches and dents in it as it had for weeks now, and Sebastian’s side of the room was just as unorganised as it always was in the middle of a case, but the ringing in his ears from the gunshot seemed far too real for it to have all been nothing more than a nightmare.

He could remember someone once telling him that if you died in your dreams then it could plunge you into a coma in real life, or even kill you. He had dismissed it as being nothing more than an old wives’ tale, yet now he couldn’t shake the feeling that perhaps they were right. He could still feel the cold metal of the gun in his hands and pressed against his temple. Somehow he understood that he had just escaped a very real, very horrifying death.

He found himself actually checking himself for the wounds that he had sustained in the nightmare. He wasn’t in any pain, and his clothes were undamaged and free of bloodstains. His pistol was sitting right in his holster, where it belonged.

Was the nightmare finally over? That _was_ all that it had been, right? Just a nightmare?

And then he looked down at the paperwork on the desk in front of him. At first it looked like a normal sort of case file; news clippings, photographs, suspect profiles; but then his eyes landed on a newspaper headline.

‘THREE POLICE OFFICERS MISSING AFTER INSANE ASYLUM SLAUGHTER’

What the hell? Joseph reached out for the newspaper clipping, his hand shaking, and sure enough, when he picked it up and took a closer look, he discovered that the three police officers in question were none other than himself, Sebastian and Juli Kidman.

He groaned and placed the news clipping back down on the table. He then took a look at the photographs. There was one of Ruvik, his back to the camera, and another of the church.

Annoyed at both himself and the world now, he swept the evidence off the table and onto the floor with one sweep of his arms.

Off course this wasn’t over. There was no way that this world was going to let him go. He should have known that it wouldn’t be that easy.

The door to the office swung open, and Sebastian Castellanos waltzed into the room, long tan coat flapping behind him and looking reasonably happy and confident and not at all as though Joseph had just shot him three times and then cried over his corpse.

Joseph immediately jumped to his feet, his hand reaching for the gun on his hip. He knew that his handle on reality was not particularly good at that moment, but there was no way in the world that he was going to trust anything that he saw; certainly not the warm, welcoming, stunningly beautiful sight of Sebastian striding towards him, smiling and handsome and so very much _alive_.

“Hey Joseph,” Sebastian said, moving to half-sit, half-lean on the desk in front of him, apparently not caring at all about the pieces of ‘evidence’ that Joseph had scattered all over the floor.

“No,” Joseph said, bringing one hand up to cradle his own face. He was done with this world and all of its tricks. “I don’t want to talk to you right now. You’re not real. I killed you. You’re dead.”

If his words disturbed Sebastian at all then the other man made no indication of it. Instead one corner of his mouth slid up so that he was soon smirking at Joseph.

“Am I?” he asked. “I don’t feel dead.”

“Well, you are. You’re not real. You’re just… I don’t know; a dream, or a hallucination or the product of too much wishful thinking.”

Sebastian cocked his head and stared at Joseph for a long few seconds. Joseph knew that look. Sebastian was thinking deeply and very seriously about something.

“You said that you killed me,” Sebastian finally said. “If I’m not real, then what makes you so sure that the me that you killed was real?”

Joseph wasn’t sure how he was supposed to answer that.

“I… I don’t know,” he finally admitted. “It just… It felt more real than this does.”

Why was that? Was it just because here, in the safety of their office, he could actually be happy? Was that it? Was he just so used to their lives being a never-ending shit-show, a collection of blood and fear and the worst of humanity, that a soft, warm moment like this felt alien to him?

No, that wasn’t it. He had felt the Protected, and then the warmth of Sebastian’s body as both of them died in his arms. He hadn’t felt this version of Sebastian; had no way of knowing that this wasn’t just his eyes playing tricks on him.

He reached out before he could question his own thought processes, and grabbed hold of Sebastian’s shoulder. The thick fabric of his coat and the strong, steady warmth of Sebastian’s broad shoulder felt surprisingly solid and real beneath his hand.

“Hrm…” Joseph murmured softly as he clutched at Sebastian’s coat.

Sebastian just laughed in response to that, and before Joseph could tell what Sebastian was doing, the other man had reached up and grabbed Joseph’s spare hand in his own, intertwining their fingers as tightly as he could and pulling Joseph down so that he was sitting on the desk beside Sebastian, knocking the last two stubborn photos onto the floor as they moved.

“That real enough for you?” Sebastian asked.

“I don’t know,” Joseph replied.

The Protected and the Sebastian that he had killed had both felt very real as well. So had the one that had kissed Joseph, and the one that had tackled him to the ground and forced the gun out of his hand, and the one that he had almost strangled. They couldn’t all be real. It didn’t make any sense.

But how much had been real and how much had just been the product of Joseph’s imagination, or a spectre that Ruvik had sent to torture him?

Perhaps none of them were actually real, and Joseph was all alone in this. Perhaps, and this was an incredibly comforting thought, Sebastian hadn’t really been here at all, and was safe at home or at the station, completely out of reach of Joseph and Ruvik and all of the other things in here that seemed to exist just to torment or hurt them.

He thought once more of the trip-wire that had come out of nowhere, of the twisted dog-monster that looked almost exactly as Joseph had imagined it, and then, of the Protected, summoned from the depths of his own twisted mind. Whatever else was happening, it was clear that a simple thought could assume a real and very dangerous form in here. He needed to figure out how exactly it all worked.

“So, that… thing back there,” Joseph began, more thinking out loud than actually expecting an answer from Sebastian. “The Protected; was that my creation or Ruvik’s?”

“I think it’s time to own up. That shit was all you, Joseph.”

Sebastian’s hand squeezed Joseph’s own, which made it surprisingly easy to think. Joseph wished that such a simple thing didn’t make such a massive difference.

“Okay. So that was… I don’t know how to put it into words. What I feared I could do to you? And you… I’m pretty sure you’re not real either, at least for some of the time. After all, there’s no way that you would actually kiss me and it’s certainly not possible for you to have died so many times, so you’re… I don’t know. I guess I just pull you into being whenever I really need you.”

“Like you really needed me to kiss you?” Sebastian suggested with a mischievous grin. He leaned closer, wrapping his spare arm around Joseph’s shoulders and slowly moving closer until his face was barely an inch away from Joseph’s. Joseph groaned and shoved the other man away, even disentangling his fingers from those of the fake Sebastian. He was too tired for this bullshit.

“Shut up Seb,” he said. “You’re not really helping right now.”

“You were the one that brought me here,” Sebastian said as he leaned back against the desk and started to light a cigarette.

Joseph got to his feet and started to pace backwards and forwards across the short length of their office, while all the while Sebastian watched him and smoked his cigarette, as though he didn’t have a single care in the world.

And what the hell did that say about Joseph? He had summoned Sebastian into being time and time again, either to taunt himself or because… what? Because he thought he needed Sebastian’s help? Jesus Christ, how dependent on the other man was he?

He needed to work out what was real and what was false. He had no evidence that any of Sebastian’s manifestations had been real. He could guarantee that the ones in which Sebastian had been maimed or killed in front of him _definitely_ weren’t. It was more likely they were just Ruvik or whatever this place was trying to mess with his mind and break him. Any moment during with Sebastian had been overly affectionate could also be ruled out, which unfortunately (or perhaps that should be fortunately, considering how the moment had ended) meant that the time that Sebastian had kissed him was doubly unlikely to be true.

It was entirely possible that nothing that had happened to him since he had first stepped foot inside Beacon Mental Hospital was actually real, but there had to be some sort of logic to it all. He tried to retrace his steps, starting from when he and Sebastian had first walked through the doors.

“None of this makes sense,” he said, more thinking aloud than addressing Sebastian, but the other man replied nevertheless.

“It probably makes perfect sense to the psychopath running this show,” Sebastian muttered.

Joseph frowned. The other man had said similar once before, while the two of them had been investigating a particularly grizzly series of murders. The psychopath running the show?

“You mean Ruvik?” Joseph asked. “Or me?”

Because so much of what he had experienced seemed to be more relevant to his own rapidly fracturing psyche, as though the entire world had been constructed to probe at his darkest fears.

He shook his head, trying to will away the darker, more pessimistic thoughts that threatened to overwhelm him.

_Retrace your steps Joseph_ , he tried to tell himself. _You can make sense of it all if you just put your mind to it._

He had walked into Beacon Mental Hospital, and then there had been the earthquake…

He shook his head again. His memories were already starting to get a little blurry as far as his first few hours in the place was concerned.

The first thing he could remember with absolute clarity was…

He grimaced as he realised the desk beneath his hand had suddenly grown damp and sticky, and a wave of fear and nausea threatened to overwhelm him. The stench of alcohol seemed to swarm his nostrils, and he gasped as the windows of the room smashed open. A torrent of alcohol swept into the room, surrounding him and filling the office in a matter of seconds.

Yes. This is what had happened last time. He had drowned, or come close to it.

Joseph realised that he was surprisingly calm. His eyes should have been stinging and the wounds, including the massive one on his side that the Keeper had left him with should have been wracking his entire body with pain, but instead there was nothing, only a strange sense of calm. He knew how this went. He had drowned once before and he was still completely fine. It was a sad state of affairs, but he had reached a point in which knowing what lay ahead, no matter how horrible, was infinitely preferable to the unknown.

He let himself float in the liquid, watching as the paperwork and furniture and all of the small, normal things that made up his safe, normal life with Sebastian drifted all around him, allowing himself a few moments of slow, peaceful nothingness, before he opened his mouth and let the liquid slide down his throat.

* * *

 

He awoke in the tub once more, as he knew that he would.

This time there was no Sebastian to help him stumble out, but this time he found that he did not need Sebastian. His resting place seemed a little different as well. While last time he had woken up in a relatively normal bath tub, this time he found himself in an oddly fleshy pod. He blinked a few times and then sat up. He poked the soft, flesh-like material that he was sitting on a couple of times, mildly disgusted but completely unsurprised when the pressure caused the material to release more of the clear, viscous liquid that he had been bathed in.

He stretched, and then stepped out of the pod, feeling more confident than he perhaps had since this whole thing had first started. This place, scarily enough, was starting to make sense to him.

A quick check of his own status revealed that the tears in his clothing showed no signs of reappearing. The pain was gone, and when he lifted his shirt and vest he discovered that his wounds were completely gone as well, the skin smooth and unscarred where it had previously been mauled thanks to the efforts of the Keeper and the Protected.

All of his injuries had disappeared, and Joseph Oda felt ready to tackle the mystery of this place head on.

* * *

It was starting to become clear to him that his own thoughts were somehow able to influence his surroundings. So far that had mostly manifested as his nightmares coming to life in front of him, but he had seen Ruvik deliberately warp their reality as well, and Joseph was determined that he would learn how to do the same.

He closed his eyes, and attempted to summon a few basic things to him; medicine, a new gun... Things like that. Things that would _help._

When he opened his eyes once more he discovered that this world had indeed responded to his request, although maybe not quite in the way that he had hoped. The ‘medicine’ that it had provided him with turned out to be a few syringes of a suspicious amber-coloured liquid that he investigated for a few moments before gently putting them back down on the bench in front of him, a few bandages that looked as though they would be more likely to infect a wound than do anything to protect or heal him, as well as a bottle of rubbing alcohol that had a look and a smell to it that plunged his mind straight back to the pool that he had waded through while trying to escape from the Keeper. He shuddered and placed that back down next to the syringe.

As far as weapons went he could have done a lot worse than the axe and sniper rifle that lay in front of him. They were both strangely familiar, and he picked each of them up with a smile. These he could definitely use.

Well, that had to prove that his theory was correct, and now that he knew his own mind was helping to create all of this, he had every intention of putting that knowledge to good use. He had to be sure not to dwell too long on any negative thoughts, although how easy that would be was anyone’s guess.

So now what should he do?

The answer came to mind immediately. It was almost embarrassing how much of his time Joseph spent worrying about his partner, but there really was no way around it. He needed to find Sebastian, wherever he was, and make sure that the other man was okay.

He closed his eyes and attempted to will himself to Sebastian’s side. Surely if he thought hard enough about the other man then this world would find some way to bring the two of them together once more.

He thought of the moments they had shared in their joint office, laughing together or working on a case. He thought of the more difficult moments as well; Sebastian sad and broken after the death of his daughter, and the subsequent disappearance of his wife. Sebastian had needed so much support in those months. He thought of Sebastian, tackling him to the ground to stop Joseph shooting himself; Sebastian fighting so hard to keep him safe and make sure that no matter what happened, Joseph could not give in.

And then, almost unbidden, he thought of Sebastian’s arms around him, of the other man leaning in and pressing his lips against Joseph’s. He knew that it had not been real, but it had certainly felt real enough, and after spending so long pining for the other man, it was not a memory that could be easily pushed aside.

But no; that had not been the real Sebastian, and what he needed right at that moment was his partner, not some half-baked knock off.

So Joseph tried once more to picture Sebastian’s face; the real Sebastian this time, brow furrowed, even as he slept on his couch, the light from the television in front of him bathing his face, and the smell of spilled whiskey flooding the room. Perhaps he was flawed and broken, and perhaps in his attempts to protect him, Joseph would indeed end up doing more harm than good, but Sebastian was the man that he loved, and no matter what happened, even if he was never able to be anything more to Sebastian than a friend, he needed to be by Sebastian’s side, to take care of him and make sure that everything was all right.

* * *

He finally allowed himself to open his eyes once more. He was lying on his side on something that was hard and uncomfortable. The first thing that he saw was Sebastian, lying on the ground next to Joseph and propping himself up with one elbow in what was probably supposed to be a seductive pose. He was also wearing his trench coat, and that in itself was enough to make Joseph frown.

“Hey there sleeping beauty,” Sebastian said, and Joseph groaned.

Yeah. That was definitely not the real Sebastian. Sebastian had not been that fun or flirtatious, even in jest, for years now.

“Go away,” he told the fake Sebastian, waving at him in dismissal.

To his surprise the apparition disappeared immediately, and for a moment he just sat there, stunned, before he decided that he should get to his feet and take stock of his surroundings.

He was standing in the ruins of a large building; the sort of tall skyscraper that was only found at the very centre of Krimson City. He had woken up on top of a pile of collapsed and broken chunks of concrete, and when he looked outside he discovered that the buildings around him were in equally bad condition. There was no blood though, and no barbed wire or pools of suspiciously alcoholic liquid, so for the time being this place was fine by him.

He cursed as he realised that his axe and sniper rifle had been left back in the last room. He could have used those, but he was sure now that if he really concentrated he would be able to pull those weapons, or ones just like them, out of thin air if he needed them once more. He checked his pistol, and discovered that not only was it undamaged, but its chamber was completely full of bullets once more, because of course it was. He was starting to suspect that he would never run out of basic pistol ammo in this place, which was fine by him.

He tried to tell himself that the pistol was all that he needed; that the sniper rifle and axe would only slow him down, knowing that it was probably a good idea to stay as optimistic as possible in this place.

The next step was to reach higher ground and find out where he was. All in his mind or no, he was sure that knowing the area would give him an immediate advantage. Perhaps he could even find his way back to the station, or some other familiar building.

It was slow going. The undead things kept showing up, just one or two at a time, but it was enough that Joseph could never really relax.

Eventually though he managed to climb to the top of a three-storey red-bricked building that advertised itself as a coffee house, but which he could not remember from the real world for the life of him. He looked around the ruined city, taking special note of the enormous, gaping chasm that had appeared in the centre of it.

And there, standing alone in the middle of the chasm, stood a building that was familiar, and at the same time, anything but comforting to Joseph.

Beacon Mental Hospital.

The hospital stood in the very centre of it all, solitary and stable, an island in the middle of an endless ocean of chaos.

Joseph frowned as he thought of all that he had been through so far. This was not the first time that he had spotted Beacon Mental Hospital in the distance like this, although it was the first time that he had paid much attention to it.

He moved downstairs into the ruins of the coffee shop, picking a mostly whole table near a window that gave him a perfect view of the asylum. He needed to visualise his journey up to that current point, and after only a moment’s thought, he decided it was time to do exactly that.

He closed his eyes and pictured each of the locations that he had travelled through, one at a time. For each one he opened his eyes and found at least one photograph in his hand that showed the location he had been remembering.

He placed each of the photographs onto the table in front of him, spreading them out so that he could get a good view of them. By the time he had finished the table was almost completely covered in photographs. They were taken from different camera angles, not all of which were ones that were physically possible for him to have actually seen, and they were by no means the only areas through which he had travelled, but there was something that they all had in common which was completely undeniable now that he was looking at them all side by side.

Beacon Mental Hospital. It followed him like his shadow; always there, even if it was only out of the corner of his eye. There, in that photo… he wasn’t sure where he had been then, but that paperwork discarded haphazardly on the floor bore the hospital’s logo. And there, as they had been approaching the church, Beacon Mental Hospital was visible in the far distance.

Clearly the hospital had some sort of significance, and Joseph had trouble believing that it was only because it was the place in which they had first fallen into this nightmare.

He looked back up at the hospital, and found himself glaring at it as though the building itself was responsible for everything that had happened to him.

Now he knew that if he wanted answers then he would have to journey to the hospital itself, although how he was supposed to do that when his surroundings were so treacherous and unpredictable was beyond him, and that wasn’t even taking into account the enormous chasm that currently lay between himself and the hospital.

Oh well. He would just have to find a way.

At least he had a goal now, and he got to his feet, leaving the photos where they lay and checking the area around himself to see if he might find anything useful. Sebastian (if he believed the part of his own mind that insisted that the Sebastian he had encountered on the way to the church was real) had managed to find an assortment of _very_ useful weaponry. Surely he could find something of use. If he just allowed himself to be completely convinced that he _would_ find the weapons, if only he searched hard enough…

He found the axe waiting for him behind the counter of the coffee shop. The sniper rifle was a no-show, but Joseph still smiled as he picked up the familiar weapon in both hands. He knew now that he was definitely capable of finding his own weapons. He just needed to stay calm and in control and everything would be fine.

* * *

Reaching Beacon Mental Hospital proved just as frustrating as he had anticipated. Any time that he thought he was heading in the right direction he discovered his way blocked by a collapsed building or an impassable drop into the chasm.

He could only put up with dead ends for so long however, and when he came face to face with the chasm for the third time he simply stood there, arms folded, contemplating the hospital in the distance.

Travelling by foot was not going to cut it, no matter how he looked at it. The sheer drop stretched out for kilometres on either side of him. There had to be a way though.

He started to wonder if maybe, just maybe, he might be able to will himself there. After all, he had managed to will photographs and weapons into existence already; surely it couldn’t be much harder to move himself around, and it would certainly beat having to walk there and hope that the world did not change too much or decide to deposit him somewhere else in the meantime.

He closed his eyes, and thought of Beacon. It was hard to picture it though; hard to see the building itself beyond the blood and the enemies and the fear that had been his constant companion since he had first stepped into the accursed place.

“Beacon Mental Hospital,” Joseph murmured, picturing it as carefully as he could in his mind’s eye. The front stairs leading to heavy wooden doors. The large foyer. The tall tower at its centre, like a lighthouse in the middle of all of this darkness.

“I am in Beacon Mental Hospital,” he murmured to himself, and for a moment he actually believed it. “I am going to find answers.”

* * *

He opened his eyes.

He had definitely moved, although he couldn’t be sure if the room in which he now stood was part of Beacon at all. What walls he could see were made of old stone bricks that reminded him more of the tunnels below the church than anything else.

There was a large wooden table in front of him, pushed up against one of the brick walls, and both it and the wall were covered in a series of papers displaying highly detailed pencil drawings, at least some of which appeared to be plans for sadistic traps, and long scrawling passages that Joseph glanced at briefly and then dismissed as being the ravings of a madman. Here and there on the table a few contraptions had been left as well; a bundle of barbed wire; a partially constructed bear trap… There were plans for something else as well; something that looked a lot more scientific and which, if Joseph was guessing correctly, involved interfering with the human brain in some way.

Joseph’s foot hit against something hard as he moved closer to the table; not enough to hurt, but enough to draw his curiosity. He looked down to the floor, and what he saw there made him recoil in horror, his heart immediately starting to thunder in his chest.

There, in the shadow of the table, sat a heavy metal box that looked vaguely like a small safe bound in barbed wire.

Joseph’s breath caught in his throat as he remembered running away from the Keeper, shooting desperately at Ruvik’s pet monster and hoping that he would find some way to escape from it.

Joseph backed away slowly from the table. He did not want to stay in this room for any longer than was necessary, no matter how many answers might lay on the pieces of paper in front of him. There was a door behind him on the other side of the room, and he reached for the door handle, turning his back on the box only for the few seconds necessary to complete the action, and then stumbled into the room beyond.

It was as he had feared. The room beyond might not have had the same cold, iron bars as the last room in which he had fought the Keeper, favouring instead the same old, red bricks as the room he had initially ended up in, but there, amongst shallow pools of water and thick red brick pillars, sat dozens of the metallic, safe-like boxes.

There were too many of them; far too many for Joseph to think he stood a chance of being able to fight off the Keeper successfully this time. He needed to find a way out of the area, now.

He had only taken several steps into the larger chamber when the world began to flicker and shake, his vision turning red and his heart rate speeding up in response. He clutched his axe tightly with both hands, thinking as he did that the axe might not prove to be very useful against the Keeper; not when the monster held a melee weapon that put it to shame.

The Keeper had chosen to manifest using the box right in the centre of the room. Joseph didn’t wait for it to finish coming to life before he charged towards it, screaming, and slammed the blade of his axe down into top of the metallic box.

His weapon warped the metal and wedged deep inside of it. A thick fluid that only vaguely resembled blood emerged from it, and the shaking stopped, but Joseph would not allow himself to hope that the fight had already ended.

He picked the nearest box, and brought his axe down on top of that one as well, destroying it in an even more total manner than the first one. The blade stuck though, and as he was doing his best to attempt to remove the axe the world flickered red again as the Keeper managed to materialise once more.

Joseph cursed and left the axe where it sat, turning instead to fire off a few shots at the Keeper. He managed to take it down, and Joseph thought that he might be getting better at fighting off the strange enemies of this place. He returned to the axe, eager to try dislodging it once more, but had not managed to loosen it by even a single inch when the Keeper returned to life once more, and as always it honed in on Joseph’s location almost immediately.

Joseph continued to run and shoot, all the while checking for a way to escape or some other method of combating the Keeper. An attempt to light the liquid on the ground on fire revealed that this time it was just water, and therefore mostly useless. The only door was the one leading into the small room in which Joseph had originally appeared, and he was loathe to take the combat in there lest the Keeper manage to trap him in the much smaller room.

Eventually he was snared by one of the Keeper’s traps that had been lying, hidden in the murky pools of water, undetectable until Joseph had already stepped on it and felt the barbed wire shooting up to wrap around his leg in a painful embrace.

He cursed and tried to shake off the trap, but they were surprisingly heavy, and the Keeper was approaching him. The monster paused in front of him, lifted its war hammer as though aiming for Joseph’s head, heedless of the bullets that Joseph was firing into the creature’s stomach, and then came to an abrupt halt as the world started to flicker in a similar manner to when the Keeper itself appeared.

When the flickering had stopped Joseph looked around to discover that Ruvik was suddenly standing right beside them. He held up a hand in the direction of the Keeper, and the Keeper seemed mesmerised, unable to move unless Ruvik should command it.

A muffled growl emerged from the safe-like head of the monster, and it almost sounded as though it was complaining.

“I don’t want you to kill him,” Ruvik said, addressing the Keeper, even though Joseph was right there in front of him. “Not yet.”

The strange, pale man might not want Joseph dead, but neither did he make any attempt to free Joseph from the barbed wire trap that was still wrapped around his leg, digging into his skin and leaving a dozen tiny scratches any time he tried to move.

Ruvik stared pointedly at the Keeper, and the monster eventually let the war hammer fall to the ground. Its entire body then shuddered, and as Joseph watched everything below the creature’s bizarre head began to disintegrate, turning into a thousand tiny red particles that fell into the water below, spreading out and staining that patch of water a red that looked an awful lot like blood and leaving its safe-like, bodiless head behind it.

Joseph stared at the now inanimate object, almost expecting it to come back to life again at any moment. The barbed wire trap around his leg, to his dismay, stayed exactly where it was, even as Ruvik walked slowly towards him, until there was only a foot or so of space between them.

“Why aren’t you dead?” Ruvik asked him, sounding more curious than angry.

Joseph just shrugged in reply.

“I watched you put a bullet in your brain,” Ruvik said, stepping closer and grabbing Joseph’s chin in one hand, turning it this way and that as though Joseph was a fascinating new experiment that he absolutely had to study.

“So?” Joseph replied, suppressing the urge to shove Ruvik’s hands away. “None of this is real. I’m sure I could survive worse.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Ruvik growled. “If you die in here then you stay dead. Everyone else does. What makes you different?”

“I guess I’m just stubborn,” Joseph replied, although he was fairly sure he knew the real answer. Whatever else had been going through his brain in that instant, he had believed that he would wake up after that bullet, so he had. He was beginning to think it was just that simple. Maybe if he just believed that there was no longer a trap wrapping its way around his leg?

But no, it was not going to be that easy; not when Ruvik clearly controlled everything that happened in this room, and not when the pain of the barbed wire was making itself so insistently _known._

“You _are_ stubborn, Detective,” Ruvik said. “I’m beginning to wonder if I left the wrong person in charge of protecting Leslie.”

“Who…? What are you talking about?”

“Oh Detective,” he muttered. “You are unique, even somewhat gifted, and yet somehow you remain almost willfully ignorant. Not that it matters.”

“What do you mean?” Joseph asked. He had come here seeking answers after all, and for a moment he let himself wonder if maybe the strange man in front of him might be able to provide them.

“While it would undoubtedly be fascinating to spend time studying you, I have pressing matters to attend to.”

So Ruvik intended to stay just long enough to stop the Keeper from killing Joseph and then leave again? Oh, that was fine by Joseph. Ideally the other man would have given him a few answers first, but as long as he didn’t intend to kill Joseph then Joseph had absolutely no plans of objecting.

“Farewell Detective,” Ruvik said, the corner of his mouth twitching up in a wry grin, as though he had said something that amused him.

With that the pale man disappeared, taking the trap around Joseph’s leg with him, and leaving a dead body on the floor in his wake. He approached the limp form cautiously, wondering if it was going to come to life and attack him. He glanced around the room to discover that it was not the only one. There were a handful of dead bodies all around him now; resting against the wall and the thick square pillars and lying half-submerged on the uneven ground, all of them bloodied and, Joseph would have been inclined to say if it wasn’t for the amount of dead people that he had fought off recently, most definitely dead.

At least he could move again. Joseph was about ready to dismiss the appearance of the dead bodies as being just Ruvik being particularly strange and morbid and not something he actually needed to worry about, when a sudden, high-pitched wailing erupted from somewhere nearby, and the body closest to him started to spurt blood.

Okay. So maybe the dead bodies weren’t so harmless after all.

A couple of dark, branch-like objects started to emerge from the center of the body, and it took Joseph a few moments before he realized that they were the long, distended hands and arms of a new monster, one that he had not fought before.

He sighed, finding that rather than being scared he was now starting to grow sick of fighting all of these different monstrosities, and reloaded his pistol, readying himself to fight whatever this thing turned out to be.

Six limbs eventually emerged from the torso of the dead man in front of them; four arms and two legs, each of them vaguely human, but so distorted and bent and covered in blood as to be barely recognizable. A head shrouded in long, pitch-black and blood-drenched hair emerged as well. The creature, whatever it was, shuffled around on all six limbs like an insect until it was facing Joseph’s general direction, seemed to give the air a bit of an experimental sniff, and then charged straight towards Joseph on all six of its spindly limbs.

Joseph had thought that he was ready to face a new foe, but he had not been prepared for how fast the creature in front of him was. He didn’t have time to shoot at it. In fact he didn’t have time to do anything except run, and even then he wasn’t sure that he would be fast enough.

There wasn’t anywhere that he could run  _to_  either. When he glanced over at the door that lead to the smaller room, he found that not only was it shut, but two bodies and a film of something that looked disturbingly like tortured flesh was blocking it as well.

Oh god. Where to go? What the hell was he supposed to do?

The creature was skittering quickly after him like a giant spider, sending up splashes of blood and water in its wake. Joseph dived to the side at the very last second, and the creature slammed into the wall behind him with enough force that the brick wall shattered from the impact, a pile of broken bricks falling to splash in the puddles of water or land on the creature, which flinched beneath the onslaught.

As the creature thrashed beneath the bricks Joseph realized with horror that somewhere beneath all the matted hair and twisted limbs was something resembling a human woman; a pair of sparse breasts just visible beneath the creature’s long hair. What the hell sort of twisted mind did Ruvik possess that he would call something like  _that_  into being?

There was no time to consider it though. He ran through the hole, jumping over the creature and into the sunlight.

Sunlight… He had been expecting to emerge underground, but when he looked around he discovered that he was back in the middle of Krimson City, and had emerged onto the roof of a two story building; not at all what he had been expecting.

Behind him the bricks began to move as the creature beneath them got back to her feet. Joseph glanced around him, searching for an exit. Running around the roof revealed no doors or stairs through which he might flee, and the buildings on either side of him were both too high for him to jump across to them.

There was only one way that he could escape, and that was by jumping off the edge of the building. The creature charged at him again, and Joseph jumped out of the way, before casting his eyes back to the edge of the roof.

He swallowed. He couldn’t help but think that what he was currently planning was one of the stupidest ideas that he had ever had, but he needed to find _some way_ to escape.

Perhaps… Perhaps he would be fine. The road was only a couple of stories below him; not all that far in the grand scheme of things. Besides, he knew what he was doing now. He knew how to change things.

Perhaps if he concentrated hard enough then he would be able to fly.

It was hard to think of anything but the claws of the monster chasing him, but as he stepped up onto the ledge of the roof and spread his arms out wide, he forced himself to clear his mind as much as possible.

The roof didn’t exist. The claws of the creature behind him did not exist, nor did her high-pitched wails.

He could fly. He was sure that he could.

He just needed to let go.

Joseph took one last breath and then stepped off the roof.

And immediately fell two stories and hit the hard ground beneath him.


	12. Reunion

Joseph’s attempt to fly had not gone well.

Not well at all. Most of his body was in pain now. It was hard to think considering that his head was one of the parts of him that seemed to be in the _most_ pain, but he tried to at least take stock of all of his injuries. He was definitely concussed judging by the pain in his head and how difficult it was to get his eyes to focus. His chest was hurting as well, so he suspected he could add a couple of broken ribs to his list of injuries. Probably a broken arm too if the level of pain that he was registering in his left forearm was any indication.

Now if only he could get to his feet.

But his body wouldn’t respond, no matter how much he wanted it to.

The monster with the long arms was probably nearby, coming for him with her distended claws and long, damp hair. The drop from the top of the building to the ground on which Joseph now lay would probably only delay her for a few more seconds. He knew that she would be coming for him, but he still couldn’t move.

Sleep beckoned him. He knew that falling asleep was probably the worst thing in the world that he could possibly do at that moment, not just because of the monster that would no doubt tear him to shreds as soon as his eyes closed, but also because he knew how dangerous it was to sleep while concussed. It was so hard to resist though. His body just wanted to rest.

Joseph had thought that Ruvik had left him to his fate, but as he lay there on the ground, trying in vain to will his broken body to move once more, he could have sworn that he heard the pale man’s voice coming from right beside where he lay, almost as though Ruvik was leaning down and whispering in his ear.

“Stop trying to find the answers Detective,” Ruvik said, and Joseph could have sworn that he saw a glimpse of pale fabric out of the corner of his eye, despite his increasingly blurred vision.

“You won’t like them.”

* * *

He must have fallen asleep, because the next time he opened his eyes the pain had completely gone, and the patch of ground on which he lay was not the one that he had fallen on. There was no blood for a start, and while his last resting place had been smooth concrete, at that moment he was lying on the rough bitumen of an old city road. 

His body retained a vague feeling of warmth, as though someone had been holding him in their arms while he had been sleeping. It was a good feeling; one that might have tempted him to close his eyes and drift off back to sleep once more if his resting place had been at all comfortable.

Memories of what had occurred before he had fallen asleep slowly came back to him, and he cringed when he remembered his disastrous attempt to fly. He certainly wasn’t going to attempt that one again any time soon.

At least he was still alive and apparently uninjured, but his encounter with Ruvik had left him confused. Why had the pale man sent that  _thing_  after him? If he had wanted Joseph dead then he could have just allowed the Keeper to take care of him. He considered the idea that Ruvik might have just wanted to talk with Joseph about something, but then immediately dismissed it. Too little information had passed between them for that to be the case, although Ruvik _had_ seemed awfully curious about Joseph’s continued survival.

Ruvik had said ‘farewell’. Did he mean for good? Was that why he had appeared to Joseph? The thought that it might be Joseph’s last encounter with the strange, pale man was a surprisingly comforting one, and that fact alone made Joseph fear that it was probably not true. Besides, Ruvik did not strike Joseph as being a particularly sentimental man.

Had Ruvik appeared to stop Joseph from learning too much? After all, Joseph had spotted something on the table and walls in that small room before Ruvik had shown up. He hadn’t paid all that much attention to it, but perhaps he should have.

Yes, the more he thought about it the more Joseph realized that had to be it. He was getting too close to discovering things that Ruvik did not want him to discover. After all, the only thing that Ruvik had achieved in showing up and commanding one of his pet monsters to attack Joseph was to make sure that the detective moved away from the area.

Joseph pursed his lips as he thought. If Ruvik didn’t want him to discover whatever information was hidden in that room, it made Joseph all the more determined to go back and find out what it was that Ruvik wanted, so desperately, to keep hidden.

Joseph glanced around himself in an attempt to regain his bearings. The buildings closest to him were the same dark red brick as the one that he had jumped from, but looked a lot newer and less dilapidated, although when he glanced behind himself and clearly saw the ruins of the city he knew that they were by no means sturdy or safe.

He was clearly nowhere near the location in which he had first passed out, which, in its own way, was a good thing. It did mean that he couldn’t immediately try to return to the room in which those papers had lain, but it also meant that he was far away from the Keeper, and the deadly tangle of limbs and hair that had so recently attempted to kill him.

He let his feet carry him in the direction of the chasm. After all, it was only a short distance from where he had ended up. He was dismayed when he looked out across the pit and discovered that Beacon Mental Hospital seemed to be even further away from him than before.

Well, trying to move himself around the world certainly hadn’t worked. Not only had he ended up moving himself far too close to the Keeper for comfort, but in the long run he had also managed to move himself further away from his intended destination.

Perhaps there was another way to accomplish the same end result. He was sure that he could reach Beacon if he tried hard enough. Not by teleportation though. It was far too unpredictable. He needed something else, something that had rules that were a little easier for him to predict, something that was a little more… well… normal.

He closed his eyes and concentrated. If he did this right then he should be able to summon up some sort of transport. It couldn’t be much more difficult than summoning photographs or weapons, right?

He briefly considered some sort of machine capable of flight, but quickly dismissed the idea. After his last attempt at flight it did not strike him as being a particularly good idea, especially when he considered how unlikely it was that he would know how to operate whatever flying vehicle he managed to call into existence. No, he needed something strong, and reliable; something that could hopefully withstand an attack from the monsters that roamed this place, and wasn’t likely to explode or break down at an inopportune moment.

When he opened his eyes he found himself staring at the side of a large, bright yellow bus.

It wasn’t what he had been expecting, but it would do. It at least looked as though it was in relatively good condition. He walked around the bus, inspecting it closely, and was just about to get inside and attempt to start it when he heard someone approaching.

He looked up, and froze when he saw who it was.

His partner, Sebastian Castellanos. Again.

At first Joseph considered dismissing him, but then he noticed that Sebastian was not wearing his coat, and appeared to be carrying the same arsenal of weaponry as he had during their journey towards the church. Did this mean that it was the real Sebastian? Joseph had no way of knowing for sure, but god, he hoped that it was. Either way he could have done with the other man’s company at that moment. Even if this Sebastian did turn out to be a figment of his imagination then Joseph was, at least for the time being, glad that he was there.

“Thank god you’re all right,” Sebastian, or whatever facsimile of the other man stood in front of Joseph said. “How did you get here?”

Well, this was new. In Joseph’s admittedly confusing and limited experience any versions of Sebastian that he had summoned seemed to know exactly as much as Joseph did. Maybe, just maybe, this Sebastian really _was_ real.

“It wasn’t easy,” Joseph began, trying not to let his emotions get the better of him as he thought about all the fighting and pain and hope and devastation he had been through since he had last seen Sebastian; the real one at any rate.

“At least I haven’t had any more… uh… episodes.”

He was grateful for that. Whatever Sebastian had done to him in the church, it had been enough to keep the darkness at bay. He may have had to fight monsters and deal with Ruvik’s ridiculous machinations, but at least he hadn’t had to deal with the horror of the Calling.

Joseph’s words however, caused Sebastian to look away from him, as though he was finding it hard to meet Joseph’s eyes.

“I wish I could say the same,” Sebastian muttered.

Joseph felt his heart lurch uncomfortably at that revelation. Did that mean that Sebastian had started to turn? No, that couldn’t be true. Sebastian was stronger than that. Sebastian was supposed to be _safe_ , even when everything else around them was completely messed up.

And then Joseph stopped worrying. He stopped even thinking about the prospect of Sebastian turning. Well, at least as much as he possibly could. After all, wasn’t that how this world worked? It had just found another way to freak Joseph out and keep him off balance. Whether Sebastian was actually real or not didn’t matter. He wasn’t going to let this world get the better of him.

He was not going to be distracted. He was not going to worry. He was going to focus, and by god, he was going to get out of this god damn place, and if this Sebastian did turn out to be real then he would consider it a lucky coincidence.

“Hey, I think I may have found us some transportation,” Joseph said, gesturing to the bus behind him and sending his new companion a hopeful smile.

He moved over to the bus, Sebastian following right alongside him. The vehicle looked a lot more impressive on the inside than the outside. It was larger than Joseph thought he remembered a typical bus to be; sturdier too. The metal and plastic on the inside looked almost brand new. For just a moment he allowed himself to feel proud of what he had accomplished.

He was starting to get the better of this strange place.

“This thing gonna run?” Sebastian asked as he too gave the vehicle a thorough look over.

“Only one way to find out,” Joseph said with a smile.

Things were looking up. He was _not_ going to let this world get the better of him again. They were going to make it out.

There was a series of thumps at the front of the bus, followed by the sound of a female voice cursing, which caused both Joseph and Sebastian to turn around and look towards the driver seat, where none other than Juli Kidman now sat, struggling to get the vehicle started.

“Shit!” a very panicked looking Kidman swore as she turned the key in the ignition, only to have the bus let out a series of quiet groans and shudders.

For a moment Joseph wondered if it was his own subconscious screwing them over. He was completely sure that he would be able to get the bus started with no problems whatsoever, but maybe, just maybe, he didn’t _want_ Kidman to be able to drive the bus that he had put so much thought and effort into. Kidman _did_ seem a little panicked though, almost as though she was running away from something.

“What are you doing?” Sebastian demanded of Kidman, while Joseph looked backwards and forwards between them. His partner did not sound happy to see Kidman, which was unexpected. Sebastian and Kidman had always gotten along quite well. Clearly something had happened between the two of them since Joseph had last seen them.

He realized that more and more he was starting to think of the two of them as being real. It was a dangerous path to travel down, but no matter how he looked at it, he couldn’t see himself or Ruvik _choosing_ to summon Kidman into existence, except in some sort of manner that would torment him, and this Sebastian was not acting in any sort of way that Joseph would have been able to predict.

“Answer me!” Sebastian barked. Oh, he sounded furious. Kidman must have done something _awful_.

Kidman did not respond, and before anyone could say anything else Joseph and Sebastian were thrown to the floor as the bus lurched beneath them. Joseph caught sight of something long, dark and hairy, like an insect limb but several meters in length, which quickly retreated from the corner of his vision. He had almost gotten back to his feet when whatever it was shook the bus again and he was thrown back down to the floor.

Kidman finally succeeded in bringing the bus to life, and they sped off down the city street, the bus rattling and thumping beneath them, still apparently not content at being controlled by the female detective.

Joseph stumbled to his feet and offered an arm to Sebastian, just as Kidman forced the bus through a too-tight turn. Sebastian stumbled to his feet and the two of them turned to face the back of the bus just in time to catch sight of the thing that had been chasing Kidman.

It had six spider-like legs, each of them easily as twice as high as the bus, but the thing’s torso was a bulbous mass of flesh and viscera. A pair of too-human eyes looked out from what only vaguely resembled a face; a large black tube covering its mouth and running over its shoulder and down its length.

Kidman kept the bus speeding along, but somehow the enormous creature was capable of keeping up with them, and before long a pair of its long insectile limbs had reached out to pierce the back of the bus. The rear of the bus tore away with a pained-sounding screech, before flying away and leaving the back of the vehicle totally exposed.

One of the limbs thrust down from above and stabbed through the top of the bus. It would have skewered Sebastian too, if Joseph’s partner hadn’t dodged at the last minute. The limb pulled back, curving as it did and taking the entire roof of the bus with it.

They were now completely exposed. The spider-like monster had opened the bus like a tin of sardines, and was coming for all three of them. To make matters worse the bus had completely stopped thanks to the monster’s attack, and Kidman appeared to be having trouble getting it to start again.

Joseph cursed internally at the destruction of his creation. If only he had found a way to keep it whole for more than just a couple of minutes…

“Damned if I’m going to die here,” Sebastian said as he pulled one of his many guns from it’s place on his back and strode towards the rear of the bus. Sebastian was right; it looked like they had to fight, and while their enemy might have been rather large and intimidating, at least it wasn’t trying to mess with Joseph’s mind.

Joseph nodded at his partner and the two of them moved together, drawing their weapons as they drew closer to the horrible creature. Joseph still only had his pistol, but he had a feeling that would be enough, especially when Sebastian was still packing such an interesting array of weaponry.

Together they unloaded bullet after bullet into the creature’s enormous bulk, but nothing seemed to stop it. It stabbed down with its long, spear-like limbs, trying to impale them, even as Sebastian lined up a perfect shot that hit the creature right in the middle of its warped face.

The creature shuddered, and for a second Joseph allowed himself to hope that they had killed it, but then a half dozen writhing, foot-long larva spewed out from the bottom of the creature’s torso to land on the bus below them.

The bus shuddered back to life and they managed to pull away from the large monster, at least a little, while Sebastian and Joseph dealt with the larva. They looked like enormous leeches, and were utterly revolting, but at least they squished easily enough underfoot.

Kidman focussed on driving, while Sebastian took pot shots at the large creature that continued to follow them. Joseph knew that his own small pistol did not have the range or the accuracy to cover the distance between the bus and the creature, so he didn’t bother trying to fight it, at least for the time being, saving his bullets for when they might actually be of some use.

The bus approached a small alleyway, and Sebastian yelled at Kidman, prompting her to drive the bus inside it. The giant creature came lumbering in after them, but it was too large to fit, and only ended up smashing against the side of one of the nearby buildings. The building crumbled into pieces, which quickly started to rain down on top of the creature, pinning it in place and effectively blocking off the entrance to the alleyway.

Joseph allowed himself a small, pleased smile, but then when he looked to the front of the bus he let out a small groan.

The way in front of them was also blocked by rubble. They may have stopped the insectile monster, but they were now also trapped.

“I don’t know how long we’ll be safe here,” Kidman muttered.

Joseph had to agree with her rather pessimistic outlook. If it had been just him by himself then he might have been able to find a way out, but with Sebastian and Kidman both already in a panicked state, Joseph knew it would only be a matter of time before something managed to find them. Either that creature would eventually burst through the rubble and come after them again, or there would already be something waiting for them in the darkness of the alley.

Joseph started to look around for some way the three of them might escape. He hadn’t been looking for more than a couple of seconds when a large wooden crate was suddenly hurled into the bus alongside them.

“Now what?” Sebastian muttered as he took in the sudden presence of the crate.

Joseph looked up, to where a large, broken piece of concrete hung a little way above the bus. He was disappointed although unsurprised to find a small group of undead were standing on top of it. They had noticed the bus and its three living occupants, and were slowly shuffling towards them.

“Sebastian,” Joseph called out. “They’re above us.”

His partner whirled around, gun at the ready, just as the closest undead looked at the bus and the three humans within it and let out a loud, blood-curdling scream.

Kidman stood up from her place at the driver’s seat and drew her pistol from its holster, and the three of them stood ready as the undead approached.

The three police officers shot undead after undead as they shuffled towards the bus. They seemed to have been hiding in every hidden nook and dark corner before the three officers had come crashing into their hideout. Some of them carried guns or threw knives or explosives. Joseph and the others made sure to take these ones out as soon as possible.

There were so many of the things. Just when Joseph had thought they were done another wave would approach from a different direction. But while their undead foes might have numbers on their side, the three police officers had teamwork. They would call out to each other any time they were overwhelmed, or when they spotted the next wave or a particularly dangerous enemy.

Even though the undead continued to come Joseph was starting to feel as though the three of them were on top of the situation. In fact, he realized as he shot down the enemy closest to him, that he was more relaxed at that moment than he had been in a long time. Sure, they were still facing a hoard of the undead, and their deaths were still only one unlucky bullet away, but these enemies, numerous though they might be, were at least easy to deal with. He had his partners at his back too, and none of them were injured or in any more trouble than they had been lately.

It seemed easy; almost too easy.

Joseph’s latest target fell to the ground. This particular undead hadn’t been all that different from the others, except that it had been holding a lit stick of dynamite and had been preparing to throw it at the half-destroyed bus. As it fell to the ground the stick of dynamite rolled out of its hand.

Joseph cursed as he watched the fuse burn shorter and shorter. The dynamite rolled not towards them however, but towards a gas tanker that was stuck in the wreckage in front of them.

Joseph opened his mouth to warn his two partners, but the stick exploded before he could say anything. Luckily Sebastian and Kidman had noticed it in time however, and had taken shelter before the gas tanker blew sky high. Joseph had been anticipating tragedy when he first saw the dynamite rolling out of the dead thing’s hand. Instead it turned out to be quite a fortunate turn of events.

When the dust and rubble cleared they discovered that the dynamite had actually cleared them a path out of the alley. Kidman noticed the new opening as well, and the three of them wordlessly agreed that it was time to move forward. Within seconds of the dust clearing they were on the way again, Kidman once more at the steering wheel.

“That was a close one,” Joseph muttered, thinking both about the dynamite and the situation in the alley in general.

He breathed a sigh of relief and tried to get his bearings. It was difficult when the bus was still travelling along at a reasonable pace, but he soon managed to spot Beacon Mental Hospital between two buildings in the distance.

He was sure that they were in Krimson city, or at least a fractured facsimile of it, but the roads were not as familiar as they should have been. Even if they hadn’t been all broken up and twisted, the names were all wrong. He thought he had at least a vague idea of how to get closer to the hospital though.

“Keep us to the left up here,” he told Kidman, hoping that neither of his partners would object to his plan to visit Beacon. He was now absolutely convinced that if they were going to find answers anywhere then it would be inside the old building where it had all begun.

They hadn’t driven much further though when the spider-like creature suddenly appeared again, dropping down behind the bus as though it had jumped down from one of the buildings above and causing them to skid to a halt.

Joseph frowned. He was already sick of this thing. It loomed over the bus, beady eyes staring at them as the pipes that emerged from its mouth swung low beneath its stomach. Its lower body swayed and pulsed and dripped a thick, viscous slime all over the floor.

Joseph and Sebastian wasted no time in drawing their weapons and taking the creature on once more. It pumped out more of the disgusting larval creatures again, and again Joseph and Sebastian took them on, squashing them with ease in between shooting at the monstrous bulk that had spawned them.

And then Joseph’s gun let out a surprising, and really very worrying, clicking noise.

He was out of bullets. He hadn’t even been sure that could happen here until that exact moment.

“Jesus, no,” he cursed beneath his breath.

He was practically helpless, unable to help Sebastian as he fought off the monster. He could still stomp on the smaller creatures, and he did this with relish, while all the while trying not to panic; trying to tell himself that everything would be all right, even though he had finally run out of bullets.

It wasn’t easy though. Being told not to panic, even by himself, often had the effect of making him panic even more. Instead he focused on Sebastian, on the welcoming sight of the other man’s shoulders as Sebastian stood in front of him and faced the monstrous spider creature head on.

Kidman got the bus started again before Sebastian could take the creature down. They sped away from the creature as fast as the bus could take them, and Joseph was more than happy to watch the creature recede into the distance behind them.

Of course it wasn’t done though, and came speeding after them as fast as its long legs could carry it. Within mere seconds it was not only keeping up the same pace as them, but growing closer to them.

Kidman made one sharp turn, and then another, but it wasn’t enough to shake the creature. It pounced on the bus, shaking the vehicle and throwing Sebastian and Joseph to the floor, but not stopping them completely. The creature wasn’t done, and the next time it jumped at them, it did so before either of them could make it to their feet, and this time it managed to latch itself on to the back of the vehicle.

Joseph could only watch in horror as the creature reared back on its hind legs, two long, sharp pincers poised to plunge down towards Sebastian and tear him apart.

Then the creature was suddenly pried off the back of the bus with a short, wet ‘thud’. Joseph soon realized that Kidman had driven the bus into a tunnel. It was a smart move. The creature’s body had been too large to fit, and had slammed into the exterior of the tunnel, removing it from the bus and undoubtedly doing a substantial amount of damage to it in the process.

It seemed that this time they had actually managed to get away from it.

Joseph breathed a sigh of relief and collapsed into the nearest seat. The bus still stank of the leeches and the slime that had covered them, but for the first time in a long time he felt as though they might actually be out of danger. He had Sebastian beside him and Kidman at the wheel, and as far as he could tell they were all the real version of them, and neither of them looked as though they were going to turn or try to kill him any time soon. They were headed towards Beacon Mental Hospital and at least had a vague plan.

They seemed like simple things to ask for, and yet he was so very grateful for each and every one of them, even for the silent presence of Kidman.

Sebastian sat down on the other side of the bus and leaned forward towards Joseph. Joseph found his eyes roaming up and down his partner’s body, checking for any sign of injury. That fight had been a close one. Then again, there had been far too many close ones of late. Not for the first time he found himself thinking that he would be glad when this was all over and he could finally relax completely.

“Where are we headed Joseph?” Sebastian asked.

So Sebastian had noticed that Joseph had a plan.

“I’ve got a theory,” Joseph told him. “We seemed to be moved around an awful lot. Almost as if by somebody’s will.”

That somebody was obviously Ruvik, but he didn’t know whether Sebastian had met the pale man yet, or whether he would have any idea who Joseph was talking about. There was no need to complicate matters just yet.

“So it’s nearly impossible to get a sense of the geography around here,” Joseph continued. “But the light; Beacon Mental Hospital. It’s always in the distance.”

He took a deep breath. This next bit was going to be a little more difficult to explain. In fact he wasn’t entirely sure that Sebastian would believe him.

“There’s another thing. If we concentrate enough then we can affect reality as well. I’ve already succeeded in doing so several times, but I think having you two around is interfering with it somehow. Also, I tried teleporting to Beacon earlier but something stopped me. I think something is trying to keep us away from that place.”

“Yeah, so have I,” Sebastian said, which didn’t seem to make any sense at all. Sebastian’s eyes didn’t seem to quite be focused on Joseph’s face, and Joseph blushed when he realized Sebastian’s gaze aligned rather more closely with Joseph’s crotch.

“It seems like it’s the same exact one but it’s hard to be sure,” Sebastian continued. Was Sebastian even having the same conversation as him?

“The thing that I’ve noticed is that you have to keep a close eye on your emotions. This place seems to thrive on fear and doubt. You can’t let yourself be dragged down too much or…”

“So you figure we should just cut to the chase and head straight for the hospital?” Sebastian interrupted him.

Well, that settled it. Sebastian was definitely not having the same conversation as Joseph. Still, he seemed to be on the same page as Joseph in regard to one thing. Joseph had at least managed to achieve _something_ , even if it was only to direct the other two towards the hospital.

But why had Sebastian not heard what Joseph was really saying? Was Sebastian just not ready yet to know the truth about this world; that half of the nightmares they had experienced were of their own creation?

“Exactly,” Joseph said. There was no point in trying to force their conversation to make sense.

“Nice work, detective,” Sebastian said, sending Joseph a brilliant smile.

Joseph did his best to ignore the sentiment. There had been times in Joseph’s life when even that small bit of praise would have been enough to keep him smiling and focussed for an entire day, but not anymore.

“The right side looked like it headed more directly to the hospital,” Joseph said.

He got to his feet, intending to move to the front of the bus and check their current route. After all, this place liked to play tricks on all of them. It was probably a good idea for him to check that they were still heading the right way every so often.

He didn’t get very far before a pain suddenly erupted in his stomach. A split second later he heard the gunshot.

He doubled over, collapsing on his side on the nearest seat. God, he was suddenly in so much pain. That shot had come out of nowhere, with no warning at all. What the hell had done this to him? It didn’t follow the rules of this place; there had been no chase, no terror, no fight for his life…

He was vaguely aware of Sebastian shouting, calling out his name, but he couldn’t make sense of the words.

Everything seemed so far away. He was lying down on the chair, in so much pain that he could barely think, but at the same time he was sitting back up, staring at the scene with a sort of reserved detachment that made him wonder if it wasn’t someone else entirely that had taken the bullet.

“You’re bleeding out,” a familiar voice said from right beside him, and this time the voice was crystal clear.

Joseph looked over, quickly took in the brown overcoat and rolled his eyes. The fake Sebastian again. Great. Just what he needed.

He folded his arms in front of his chest and watched the other Sebastian, the one that might actually be real, as he leaned over Joseph’s injured body, his voice and movements so full of worry that it should have been touching. It should have been. Right now Joseph just found it concerning.

“You heard what Ruvik said,” the coat-wearing Sebastian began. Joseph half-expected the fake to place a hand on his shoulder, but there was no affection this time; just words, delivered with so little emotion that the fake Sebastian might as well be talking about the weather.

“You die here and that’s it,” coat-wearing Sebastian continued.

Joseph wasn’t so sure of that. After all he had shot himself in the head and _he_ wasn’t dead yet. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t have to worry about it right at that moment anyway. It was just a bullet wound. Even in the real world he had been through worse, although the placement of said bullet wound was perhaps cause for concern.

No, right at that moment he was worried about something else entirely. The look on Sebastian’s face as he attended to Joseph; the gentle touch of his hands; it was almost enough to make Joseph think that Sebastian actually loved him, which he knew for a fact was no more than a pathetic fantasy, and one which he would do well not to dwell on for too long. If wanting to protect Sebastian had created that monstrosity in the catacombs, then he did not want to think what might come from hoping Sebastian would love him back.

“I know you’re not real,” Joseph told the coat-wearing spectre beside him, “but is that Sebastian real? I’ve never summoned two of you at once before. Seems like it would break the illusion.”

“I don’t know,” his shadow replied. “Would you make a Sebastian that ran off towards danger as recklessly as he’s doing right now?”

Joseph blinked a couple of times and groaned as he felt himself be pulled back into his own body. He looked over his shoulder and out of the bus, where Sebastian was sure enough running straight towards a labyrinth of cars that was being prowled by more than its fair share of undead. The ambulance Kidman had pointed out was far in the distance, and Joseph groaned again as he realised Sebastian was risking his life to save Joseph’s.

“Idiot,” Joseph muttered. “What are you doing, Seb?”

“I’m trying to protect you,” the coat-wearing Sebastian replied, even though Joseph’s attention was very clearly on the other version of his partner. “Isn’t that obvious?”

Just like Joseph wanted to protect Sebastian, except without the cage or the torture, obviously. Or was it?

“This place,” Joseph whispered as his thoughts started to join together to make an eerie sort of sense. “It runs on fear, doesn’t it? It, or Ruvik, or whatever it is that’s actually controlling everything; they want us to be scared.”

Sebastian shrugged.

“Something like that.”

“Where did that bullet come from?” Joseph asked.

The other Sebastian looked confused.

“From nowhere. There was nothing. Even if there was a sniper the odds of making that shot while we’re in a moving vehicle are ridiculous. So where did the bullet come from? Why did it suddenly appear? Did someone imagine me getting hurt?”

“You think maybe you keep getting hurt because I’m afraid of you getting hurt?”

“What? That’s… that’s ridiculous. It must have been my own fear.”

“You think that’s ridiculous? So how would you explain it? Did you suddenly develop a deathly fear of snipers or something?”

Joseph was really beginning to hate this Sebastian he had conjured up. He always had a point and always knew exactly what to say or do to get his point across, and it was just so damn annoying.

“It would be a lot easier to summon a bullet or influence you to slip off a bridge than summon the Protected, wouldn’t it? Think about it. You already know that the dog monster at the church, and the Doctor, and the Protected all came into existence because you lost control of your imagination, right?”

Did he know that? Joseph supposed that he did, otherwise this fake Sebastian wouldn’t have said anything.

“So, what if, on occasion, I start worrying about my beloved partner Joseph Oda getting hurt and so, thanks to my subconscious being a total dick, you actually get hurt?”

The coat-wearing Sebastian paused to light up a cigarette. Joseph was about to say something; to further question Sebastian’s… no, his _own_ logic, or perhaps to tell Sebastian to put out the damn cigarette, but he was suddenly pulled back into his body in the bus by the sound of machine-gun fire and the feeling of the bus lurching beneath him.

“What’s going on?” he managed to say, embarrassed by how weak his voice sounded.

“A truck just showed up,” Kidman replied as she got to her feet and reloaded her pistol. “There’s a mounted gun between Sebastian and the bus now. Way too many Haunted as well.”

Haunted? Joseph heard the screams of the undead, and figured that was what Kidman meant. He supposed it was as good a name for them as any.

“I’ll help you fend them off,” he said, trying to sit back up once more. “Just give me a second.”

“No you won’t,” Kidman told him. When she looked at him there was fire in her eyes. “You just lay there and try not to die. I don’t think Sebastian would cope very well if you were taken out of the picture.”

She was frowning, and clearly angry, but Joseph could tell that her anger was with the Haunted, and their situation in general, and if she was annoyed with him at all then it was because he had planned to get back to his feet when there was a bullet wounded in his stomach, slowly killing him.

After what had happened between the two of them, he _had_ wondered whether anything would be normal between the two of them ever again. He was unsure about many of his memories; of which ones had actually happened, and which ones were just some sort of messed up hallucination, but he did know that he had, at least once, attempted to murder Kidman. The rage that he had felt, the hatred, the desire to tear her limb from limb; that had all been real, even if Ruvik had manipulated events in order for them to actually fight one another.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured as he lowered his head once more. His voice still sounded so weak, and between Kidman’s gun and the chaos outside the bus, Joseph wasn’t sure whether Kidman had been able to hear him or not.

“You can apologise later,” Kidman said.

It wasn’t forgiveness. Not quite. But it was close.

Soon Joseph heard the sound of the bus door sliding open, and then, before too long, the press of Sebastian’s hands on his shoulders. The other man helped him sit back up, his hands warm and strong, and despite everything that was happening, for a moment Joseph just let himself enjoy that. It didn’t last long though. When Sebastian helped Joseph to sit upright his torso reminded him none too gently of the fact that there was still a bullet lodged within it.

Jesus it hurt.

Joseph tried to will the pain away; to tell his body and the world in general that he was not injured. He was fine. But his body wouldn’t respond; at least, not how he wanted it to. Perhaps he wouldn’t be able to fix himself while Sebastian was there, kneeling in front of Joseph and so clearly worrying about him.

Joseph wasn’t entirely sure what Sebastian was doing. He was vaguely aware of a needle being injected in his arm, and something flowing into his veins. He didn’t know what it was, but he supposed that as long as Sebastian thought it would do the job, then he would probably be right as rain in no time.

In the meantime he could always retreat back inside himself; distance himself from the actual injuries and spend some time with the insufferable fake Sebastian.

It was tempting, but no, he needed to be here. Sebastian needed Joseph there when Sebastian saved his life. Somehow he understood that much at least.

“Shit,” Sebastian suddenly cursed, pulling away from Joseph.

So, Sebastian wasn’t going to actually do anything to remove the bullet? He was just going to leave it inside Joseph? Well, that was inconvenient, but as long as Sebastian wasn’t so focussed on worrying about him, Joseph was sure that he could take care of the rest himself.

“Let’s get out of here fast!” Sebastian called out to Kidman.

Joseph glanced over, outside of the shell of the bus, to discover more of the Haunted swarming around them. There weren’t _that_ many, but Joseph wasn’t about to argue; not when he was in no condition to get up and help the other two fight.

The bus shuddered back into life, and soon they were moving again. This time the remains of the bus lurched awkwardly and shook as Kidman deliberately rammed past cars and ran over Haunted. Then suddenly the world flickered brightly for a couple of seconds, and suddenly all of the friction disappeared.

“What the hell…” he muttered to himself.

It was as though gravity had disappeared completely. He and Sebastian soon found themselves floating, and Joseph grabbed at the nearest chair to stop himself from floating away.

He caught a glimpse of Ruvik standing on the road, his eyes closed and one of his arms outstretched towards the bus before they quickly passed him.  Ruvik was making the bus _fly_? Why would he do such a thing?

Then the bus took off for real, flinging itself across a couple of city blocks and slamming into a high-rise building. Joseph winced and cried out in pain as the bus impacted and he fell to the ground. He lost all sense of direction for a moment as the bus continued on through the building, making walls crumble around it and throwing himself and Sebastian around like rag dolls.

When the world finally stopped spinning around him, he simply lay where he was on the ground. There was carpet underneath him. There hadn’t been carpet on the bus. He didn’t know where he was, but for the moment it was stable and relatively normal, and that was enough.


	13. It All Falls Down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone. This is a big chapter, both in terms of being long and because it's a pretty important part of the story. I'm actually pretty nervous posting it. I hope you like it. Please let me know what you think! :D

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: It All Falls Down

Joseph stood in the middle of his and Sebastian’s office. He wasn’t sure how or why he was there, and he didn’t want to think on it too much. Lately it felt as though he never found himself inside this room without first experiencing some sort of horrible pain or trauma.

Besides, he was far too busy looking at the room itself.

He had never seen their office in such a horrible state. Joseph wouldn’t have allowed it. Hell, Sebastian was not exactly the neatest of men, but even he would have objected to _this._

Papers littered the floor. Years’ worth of grime and stains had built up on the walls and ceiling. None of the station’s lights were working, but the smallest traces of moonlight were streaming in through the windows, or what was left of them. The glass in each one of them had been smashed to a thousand tiny pieces.

“What the hell happened here?” Joseph murmured, not expecting any sort of reply, but he heard one nevertheless.

“Hell if I know,” Sebastian’s voice replied. Joseph hadn’t even realised Sebastian was in the room with him, but when he glanced over his shoulder he found his partner standing right behind him.

“But nothing good,” Sebastian concluded, looking far more worried by the scene than Joseph was.

Joseph tried to summon a smile for his partner, but he couldn’t quite do it, and the best that he managed was a strange sort of half-baked smile that he knew wouldn’t have done anything to reassure his partner at all.

Joseph sighed and made his way over to the windows, where he could look out on the rest of Krimson City. What he saw was a world in ruins. A hole had emerged in the middle of the city, most of the buildings were destroyed, and everything had been plunged into darkness.

_Oh, that’s right,_ Joseph thought to himself. _Everything has gone to hell. Somehow I forgot about that for a second._

The sight of the ruined city didn’t make him scared; didn’t make him worried at all anymore. Something about it just made him sad, as though the city was a broken thing that should be mourned.

Joseph felt his partner’s hand land on his shoulder. He realised now that this version of Sebastian was fake. He should have probably been avoiding too much friendly contact with him for that reason alone if no other, and yet somehow he couldn’t quite convince himself to push away the other man’s hand.

Sebastian leaned close to Joseph’s ear and whispered.

“Time to wake up.”

* * *

Joseph didn’t think he had actually fallen unconscious; he didn’t feel like he had at any rate; but suddenly he was back in the broken building after the bus crush. He pushed himself up off the ground, checking his body for injuries as he did.

His wounds had disappeared. There was no sign of the phantom bullet, or of Sebastian’s clumsy attempt to fix him up, but his chest still hurt.

Sebastian lay on the carpet nearby, and for a moment Joseph was worried that something awful had happened to his partner, but then Sebastian was pushing himself up off the floor.

Which just left…

“Kidman?” Joseph asked.

The two of them both turned at the same time to look at the remains of the bus, which were now hanging precariously out of the side of the building. As they watched the bus started to shift, letting out a series of low groans as it moved, slowly at first, and then suddenly and swiftly as it plummeted out of the side of the building before either of them could try to do anything to stop it.

Joseph got to his feet and slowly approached the gaping hole that the bus had left in the wall. He stared down at the wreckage. As far as he could tell Kidman had still been inside that thing when it had fallen, and now it was little more than a crumpled and broken mess. There was no way to know whether or not she had survived.

Sebastian joined him.

“If you’re down there, hang on,” the other man said, his voice low enough that it had to be more for his own sake than Kidman’s. “We’re coming.”

Sebastian didn’t linger any longer, apparently concluding that there was no point in speculating on Kidman’s fate when they could be making their way down towards the bus instead. Joseph stayed behind for a moment longer, staring down at the bus and wondering.

The bus didn’t seem to be too far away, but considering the twisted way this world worked, Joseph wasn’t sure that they would be able to reach the bus at all if they tried to head directly towards it. He stared in the direction that Sebastian had already disappeared in, and then back at the bus. He was torn as to whether he should actually follow after Sebastian. After all, his partner seemed like more of a liability than a comfort at that moment. With Sebastian around Joseph couldn’t change the world as easily as he could when he was alone, and Sebastian’s worrying over Joseph’s fate might end up doing more harm than good.

Still, he couldn’t just abandon Sebastian. Not yet at any rate.

He sighed, glanced down at the crumpled wreckage of the bus one last time, and then headed off in the same direction as Sebastian.

Things were relatively peaceful for a while, but Joseph knew it couldn’t last.

The two of them soon came to a stop at another gap in the side of the building. It gave them an excellent view of the city, including the chasm below. Joseph could now see exactly how large and deep the chasm was. It was terrifying.

“Jesus. What could cause this much damage?” he muttered. If something had created this destruction then he certainly didn’t want to meet it.

He immediately tried to distance himself from that thought. Lingering on such fears would definitely not help him to avoid them. Not here.

He turned his attention instead to a series of shapes in the distance, which appeared to be bridging the gap between the small island upon which Beacon Mental Hospital sat and the rest of the city.

“Is that a subway sticking out of the ground?” he speculated out loud.

“Yeah, but look how it’s positioned,” Sebastian replied. Joseph hadn’t realised how close the other man was standing until he had spoken. “If we can get over there we might be able to use it to get across.”

Joseph sighed. The other man was thinking too far ahead. There was no point in planning a route like that. There was no way that this world would allow them to travel so directly, at least not without throwing significant obstacles in their path.

Perhaps he would be better off not sticking with Sebastian after all. Then he might have been able to will himself near the train, or at least out of this damn building.

“Let’s just concentrate on getting out of here,” he told Sebastian.

There was an elevator shaft directly behind them. The elevator itself was broken, the carriage hanging lifelessly halfway down the shaft and blocking most of the doorway.

Sebastian pulled out his pistol and shot through the cable. Joseph expected the carriage to plummet all the way to the bottom of the shaft, but instead it jammed just below their level. The way straight ahead of them was blocked thanks to the rubble, but with the elevator carriage in its new position they could see that the floor below was relatively clear.

Joseph could tell what Sebastian was planning before the other man had even started to move. It was dangerous. Joseph knew that it was. He also knew there would be little point in trying to convince Sebastian not to go through with it. Sebastian had always been more inclined to act first and think about the consequences later. Joseph had always been the one that always insisted they slow down and think things through first.

Perhaps however, he could use Sebastian’s actions to his advantage. At the very least this seemed like a perfect opportunity for Joseph to test a theory.

Sebastian had already jumped down onto the top of the elevator carriage.

_Don’t fall_ , Joseph thought in the privacy of his own mind. He let himself imagine the carriage falling while Sebastian was still on top of it. He knew that the carriage appeared to be wedged quite firmly in the shaft, but what if it wasn’t? What if it fell, taking his partner with it?

He forced himself to think about the worst case scenario. It wasn’t the sort of thought that he would usually find himself lingering on. Sure, he worried about Sebastian, but he generally chose to channel that worry into activity of some form, whether that was just calling Sebastian and making sure that he was okay, or reporting his partner to Internal Affairs. Not this baseless speculation.

The fear that he felt when imagining Sebastian lying broken and bloody at the bottom of the elevator shaft, half a building’s worth of rubble crushing him from above, was very real though. For a moment Joseph actually worried that he had gone too far; that when he opened his eyes he would find that his worst fears had actually come true, and that he was responsible for the death of his beloved partner.

The elevator let out a creak and then a groan.

Sebastian jumped down onto the floor below just as the elevator gave up all hope and plummeted to the bottom of the shaft behind him.

Had Joseph been successful, or had that just been an enormous coincidence? He couldn’t be sure, but either way things were going according to plan. He could leave Sebastian behind now; head off on his own without having to worry about his partner’s fate, or his partner accidentally plunging Joseph into danger.

Joseph had been leaning close to the elevator shaft, trying to get a good look at what was left of the carriage at the bottom of it. Sebastian apparently misread his intentions, because he held up a hand in Joseph’s direction.

“No,” he said. “Don’t risk it.” As though Joseph had been mere seconds away from following Sebastian down the elevator shaft.

Joseph had to hold back a scoff at that. It wasn’t as though the jump would have been particularly dangerous, especially not with Sebastian there to catch him. Still, if Sebastian was going to make this easy for him then he wasn’t going to complain.

“Hold on,” Joseph told him, gazing around at the rest of the level upon which he was now ‘trapped’. “I think I see another way down.”

And with that he turned his back on Sebastian and walked off. It was harder than Joseph thought it would be, even though he knew that it was for the best.

Joseph tried to focus on finding his own way out of this mess. There _was_ no other way down, at least, no practical way that didn’t involve parasailing down the side of the building, but now that Joseph was away from Sebastian he had access to a few options that he wouldn’t have if he had chosen to remain with his partner.

Moving the various chunks of rubble that blocked the hallways of the building seemed like a bad idea. Who knew which movement would send an entire floor of building crashing down on either himself or Sebastian?

No, he needed to try something different. He needed to stop thinking of this place as having any connection to normal rules or physics at all. What did he actually want and need? Well, he needed a way out of this building. For a moment he considered trying to track down Kidman and make sure that she was all right, but then he recognised that for the foolishness it was. He and Kidman would be no safer around one another than he and Sebastian would be, and besides, he was sure that Kidman could take care of herself.

He needed a door. Not the sort of door that would simply allow him to step into the next room, or contain a staircase that would lead him to the next floor, which Sebastian was undoubtedly in the process of exploring, unaware of his own, almost blindly ignorant adherence to normal and rather unnecessary rules.

Joseph closed his eyes and imagined a door on the wall in front of him. It would be a physically impossible door. He knew that. Beyond this patch of wall lay nothing but a stretch of air and a broken city.

At least if you were playing by the world’s normal rules.

When Joseph reached out and opened the door he was almost disappointed by how normal the scene in front of him was. It didn’t appear to be the same building; the painted walls and dark carpet had been replaced with cracked white tiling and concrete; but it was still surprisingly normal. He thought that maybe it might have been a subway of some description?

He stepped through into the next room, pistol at the ready.

He headed upwards, needing to find his bearings. A large, wide staircase lead him back up to the surface, where he managed to make out Beacon Mental Hospital, even closer than it had been before. If he was to return to the subway and make his way through the tunnel, he might even be able to make it to the train that he and Sebastian had seen dangling over the abyss. If that didn’t work then Joseph was sure he could always open another door. Surely, one way or another, he would be able to make it to Beacon Mental Hospital.

He had only made it a little way past the spot where he had originally appeared in the subway when the world flickered around him and suddenly Ruvik was standing right in front of him.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Ruvik asked him.

“Beacon Mental Hospital,” Joseph told him, stepping around the pale spectre and barely looking at him as he did.

Ruvik teleported in front of him once more.

“I don’t think so,” he said.

Joseph scowled at the other man, before turning around and summoning a door in the side of the tunnel. With any luck he would be able to use his newfound control to get away from Ruvik. Jesus the man could be annoying.

The door had appeared, and Joseph was just about to reach out and open it when it suddenly flickered and shuddered. Barbed wire shot out of the wall, wrapping itself around the door Joseph had created, and effectively shutting off Joseph’s planned route of escape.

He glanced over his shoulder to find Ruvik’s hand stretched out in the direction of the door.

“You can’t escape,” Ruvik said.

Joseph rolled his eyes at the other man, before running as fast as his feet could carry him, heading further down into the subway tunnels.

He summoned another door and started to run towards it, but Ruvik appeared between Joseph and the door before he could make it. His third attempt was buried beneath a pile of rocks that suddenly fell down from the roof above. Always Ruvik was there, just out of the corner of his eye, following Joseph without ever seeming to move at all and blocking off any exit Joseph attempted to use.

Joseph ran ahead, thinking that perhaps he should concentrate on finding a way to get rid of Ruvik rather than just attempting to run away from him. When there was a decent distance between himself and the pale man he called the roof down, blocking the path behind him with a pile of broken concrete and rocks.

He stopped, breathing hard and keeping an eye out for Ruvik. He had blocked the path off for himself as well, possibly trapping himself down there, but if it meant that he had left Ruvik behind then it would be worth it.

He should have known that it would not be that easy though, and when Ruvik appeared on the same side of the rocky barrier as Joseph, the detective could only shake his head and smile at his own stupidity.

Ruvik raised a hand without saying a word. The stone barrier suddenly exploded, the heavy chunks of concrete, some of them bigger than Joseph himself, heading straight towards him. The rocks seemed to leave Ruvik completely unharmed, flying through him as though either he or they were no more substantial than sunlight.

Ruvik had already made it clear that he did not actually _need_ to destroy the barrier if he wanted to keep chasing Joseph. It was almost as though he was breaking Joseph’s barrier just to make a point.

One of the chunks of concrete hit Joseph on the chest and shoulder, sending him falling to the damp, dirty ground on his back.

Ruvik didn’t seem to move at all. It was simply as though one moment he had been standing in front of the pile of rocks, and the next he was leaning over Joseph, looking down at him as though he was a particularly annoying insect that continued to live and writhe after it should have been squashed.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” Ruvik said. He moved one of his feet so that it was on top of Joseph’s chest, pinning him in place. He pressed down, putting all of his weight onto Joseph’s freshly injured shoulder. Joseph screamed.

“What am I going to do with you?” Ruvik muttered. He continued to stare down at Joseph as though he was trying to work out which particularly painful method he wanted to use to dispatch the detective.

Joseph however had no intention of sticking around to find out.

He closed his eyes, pressed his hands to the floor beneath him and opened a hole in the ground. It didn’t matter where it lead. Anywhere had to be better than beneath Ruvik’s foot.

He fell for a few seconds, and landed on the ground with another cry of pain.

He was fine though. He knew what to do now. He pushed himself up on his arms, ignoring the pain in his shoulder as he did, and then stumbled to his feet.

Everything around him was pitch black. There didn’t seem to be any light at all. There was no sign of walls or a ceiling, and he couldn’t even see the ground beneath him, and yet he could clearly make out his hands and feet.

_I am nowhere_ , he thought to himself as he looked around.

And yet Ruvik had not managed to follow him. That, if nothing else was a relief.

Then a red light began to flash, illuminating the space around him. What had been nothing but darkness soon turned into a rather normal, if darkly lit hallway. The red light continued to flash, as though someone, somewhere had set off an alarm.

Joseph had only just begun to take stock of his surroundings when something made him freeze in horror. There, in one corner of the hall, was one of the Keeper’s head.

“No…” he groaned. “Not you again.”

As though in open mockery of Joseph’s objections, the Keeper’s head began to shake and shudder to life. Joseph sighed, pointed his pistol at the metal box and emptied an entire clip of bullets into it.

It wasn’t quite enough, and Joseph began to run as the creature shuddered into life, its body rising into existence beneath its head. Joseph reloaded his pistol as he moved. He kept up a steady pace; not fast enough that the creature might feel compelled to charge after him, but fast enough that he kept out of its reach.

He passed several more of the creature’s heads as he ran; enough that he knew it wouldn’t be worth fighting it. It was probably better to try and outrun it; to escape if he possibly could. It had to be easier than fighting it, especially when he could now create his own escape routes if need be.

There were plenty of doors in the hallways through which they now ran, but so many of them were blocked off with barbed wire, and Joseph didn’t want to risk being trapped in a closed off room with the monster.

Instead he tried to summon one of his own doors, only to curse when his attempt failed miserably. Why were his powers suddenly not working? Was it the presence of the Keeper? Or was he close enough to one of his partners that their own perceptions of reality were blocking him again?

He kept an eye out as he ran, but he saw no sign of either of them. It didn’t matter. All that he needed to know was that for the time being at least, he was a relatively normal, relatively helpless human being. It was frustrating, but he would play by those rules for now.

Eventually he came to the end of the hallway, which lead him into a large freezer room. Frozen carcasses hung from the ceiling. They looked like they had been cows once upon a time, but Joseph had so little experience with this sort of thing, being one hundred per cent city born and bred, that he couldn’t be sure. There was a strange sort of smell in the air, less like meat, and more like whatever chemicals were being used to keep the room freezing cold.

At first Joseph thought that he had managed to find his way into a dead end. There didn’t seem to be any way out. Even worse than that was the fact that the shelves in this room seemed to be lined with a countless number of the Keeper’s metallic heads.

There had to be a way out of here though. There just had to be. There was no way that he could be trapped in here with the Keeper.

He cast his eyes around the room, looking for some sort of escape. His breath turned into mist in front of his face, fogging up his glasses and making it hard to see. Eventually his eyes landed on a small opening in the corner of the room; a dumbwaiter. It would be a tight fit, but it looked as though it might be just large enough to carry him to another floor and away from this madness.

He ran straight towards it, pushing past the heavy frozen cow carcasses as he did. He pressed the controls and then crawled into the dumbwaiter with the Keeper hot on his heels. He tucked his knees up to his chin, staring in horror as the Keeper charged towards him.

The metallic doors of the dumbwaiter closed just in time to stop the Keeper’s hammer from turning Joseph into a mangled, bloody pulp.

Before the doors closed however, Joseph caught sight of his partner Sebastian as he entered the cold room behind them. It was just a glimpse, but it turned Joseph’s heart to ice. He had unwittingly abandoned his partner, leaving him to deal with the Keeper all alone.

“No!” he screamed as the dumbwaiter took him down and further away from the Keeper and his beloved partner.

He slammed his hands against his cramped metallic prison. He didn’t know what he was trying to achieve, just that he couldn’t leave his partner alone in such a terrible situation. He needed to get back up there. He needed to protect Sebastian.

The dumbwaiter chimed at him as it came to a stop, the door sliding open to reveal a sparse, tile-covered room. Ruvik was standing in the middle, looking directly at Joseph as the detective huddled in the back of the dumbwaiter.

Joseph reached for the buttons on the outside of his small, metallic prison, trying to convince the machine to take him back up to Sebastian, but it was no use. The dumbwaiter would not respond; not now that Ruvik was staring it down.

Ruvik said nothing, just grinned at Joseph as he struggled with the controls. The pale man made only the slightest of movements and a dozen thick, heavy metal chains started to emerge from the cracks between the white tiles that covered the floor and the walls, each of them snaking towards Joseph as if they had a life of their own.

He kicked at them and tried to fight them, but soon they were wrapping around his arms and legs and dragging him out of the dumbwaiter. Ruvik continued to smile as he watched the chains retreat back behind the tiling, taking Joseph over to the opposite wall with them. They wrapped around Joseph’s arms and legs and torso, pulling him up so that before long he was pinned with his back against the wall. He tried to pull against the chains, but in response they only dug in tighter, pressing so hard against his skin that Joseph was sure something in his wrists was about to break. One of the chains wrapped a little too tightly around Joseph’s waist, almost causing him to retch.

For a moment he wondered if the chains would just keep growing tighter and tighter, slowly squeezing the life out of him and crushing his bones to dust.

“Cease your pointless struggling,” Ruvik told him.

Joseph did. The chains did not fall slack, but at least they stopped growing tighter.

Ruvik started to walk towards Joseph. He moved slowly, as though he had all the time in the world. There was something about the way Ruvik moved that seemed all wrong; as though he was a projection or a dream and not really there at all; something about the way the light in the room didn’t seem to affect him in the same way as everything else. Joseph thought that he might have been hovering just a few millimetres above the ground as well, but it was impossible to tell from his current angle. Behind Ruvik the dumbwaiter flickered and then disappeared as though it had never existed in the first place, leaving more plain white tiles in its stead.

Ruvik came to a stop right in front of Joseph.

“You’ll be safe here,” he said. “Do not try to escape. _Do not_ attempt to fight against the chains. The consequences if you were to do so would be most… dire.”

He stood so close to Joseph now that he could smell the pale man’s breathe. It smelled like dusty old books and burned meat, and nothing like anything living should. Ruvik reached up to place one hand on the side of Joseph’s face, the gentleness of it almost like a mockery of a lover’s caring touch. Ruvik’s hand on Joseph’s face was a contradiction of harsh, scratchy patches and clammy dampness. It felt disgusting and Joseph shivered in response to it, before attempting to recoil from the touch, only to be stopped by the cold, hard wall at his back, and the tight, unforgiving metal of the chains around his torso.

“I leave this world in your hands detective,” Ruvik said. Somehow he managed to make the words sound like a threat.

He smiled at Joseph, took a couple of steps back, his hand falling from the side of Joseph’s face as he did, and then suddenly disappeared, leaving Joseph alone in the room, pinned in place by the heavy black chains.

Safe? Joseph supposed he believed Ruvik. After all, the other man seemed to understand how this world worked far better than Joseph did. It was a small comfort to know that for once he wasn’t actually in danger. And yet he could not rest. Not when he knew that Ruvik was still out there and so were his partners.

Or Sebastian was at any rate. He still didn’t know Kidman’s fate.

He tried to pull against the chains but they did not budge, and when he tried to will them away, to make them recoil or turn to ash, or to transport himself to another location, he discovered that nothing worked. Here, in this chamber, it seemed that Ruvik’s will triumphed over his own.

There was no way out.

He suddenly found himself regretting his decision to part ways with Sebastian. He would have dearly loved the help of his friend in that instant, or, barring that, he would have given anything just to know for sure that the other man was still okay.

He didn’t think that he would be able to escape any time soon, but he thought that maybe, just maybe, he might be able to have his second wish fulfilled. He might be able to keep an eye on Sebastian. If he could see what was happening to the other man then he might even be able to use his powers to help him.

Joseph closed his eyes and imagined a wall of screens in front of him, each of them capable of showing him whatever part of this awful world he wished. He felt the ground shake beneath him, imagined the wall rising up from between cracks in the floor, until it was as high as the room’s ceiling, which was not remarkably high, but still beyond his reach.

When he opened his eyes again his view was immediately taken up by dozens of television screens. The sets appeared to be old. Some of them flickered with static, or only displayed their picture in black and white, and only a couple of them had any sound, but they would do for now.

At first Joseph was confused by what he saw. He had been expecting to find Sebastian in the middle of fighting some sort of hideous monster. Instead the scene in front of him was surprisingly peaceful. The television screens showed different views, but all of the same park, and it was not until he noticed the ruins of the city lurking behind the park that Joseph understood that what he was seeing was still part of the same world in which he was trapped.

The park looked perfectly normal, almost completely untouched by the ruin and violence around it. The grass was still green, the sun still shone, and the park’s rides still displayed a fresh coat of brightly coloured paint. All around the park large bubbles drifted lazily through the air. In the middle of it all stood a lone, pale figure. Joseph couldn’t tell whether they were man or child, and it took a while for him to place the figure as the one he had seen with Kidman when he and Sebastian had been approaching the church.

Whoever he was, he had to have tremendous power and resolve to keep the park as beautiful and carefree as it was.

Joseph was confused though. Obviously this person was important, but he wasn’t sure why he was watching them when he had been hoping to see Sebastian.

Suddenly the scene froze, the pale boy coming to a stop in the middle of the park, the bubbles similarly freezing in place all around him. Joseph frowned, and turned his attention to another one of the television screens, where he noticed Kidman. For some reason she was pointing a gun at the boy.

“I’m sorry,” Kidman said, her voice distorted and echoing through half a dozen old sets of television speakers. “It’s not your fault.”

What the hell was going on? Why did Kidman feel the need to shoot this boy? He appeared to be completely unarmed. Why was Joseph even watching this when...?

Then Sebastian appeared and Joseph wasn’t sure whether he should be relieved or not. Joseph’s partner slowly approached Kidman from behind, his gun pointed at the woman’s head.

“Stop,” Sebastian commanded, sounding calm but assertive. Kidman’s resolve seemed to waver.

Joseph blinked a couple of times. He was… he was having trouble focussing on the screens suddenly. Something wasn’t right. It was as though part of him was being sucked into the scene in front of him. He wondered whether he should let that part of him drift off. After all, it might be the only way that he was actually able to escape the chains that Ruvik had placed around him.

_Protect him…_ an unknown voice seemed to whisper in Joseph’s ear.

“What?” he murmured, surprised by the sound of his own voice.

Who had just spoken to him? Had that voice belonged to Ruvik? Or maybe Sebastian? Or perhaps something else entirely.

On the screens in front of him Kidman was doing her best to reason with Sebastian.

“You don’t understand,” she told Sebastian, sounding even more calm than Sebastian had. “You don’t know what he’ll become.”

Were they talking about the pale boy? Joseph couldn’t be sure. Perhaps… perhaps they were talking about him? He didn’t know anymore. God, for some reason it was so damn hard to focus right now.

“I know,” Sebastian said, his voice echoing a thousand times in Joseph’s ears.

When he closed his eyes he could see the park, as though it was right in front of him. When he opened his eyes he _was_ in the park. Sebastian was right there in front of him, staring straight at him. Sebastian nodded at him, and then at Kidman and the pale boy.

_Protect him_ , the voice inside Joseph’s head insisted.

He blinked again and then he was back in the room, tied up in chains.

What the hell was going on?

And then Joseph realised. Sebastian needed Joseph there in the park; was sure that Joseph had not only survived, but had somehow managed to make his way down to the same park as he had, despite having travelled in the opposite direction.

And yet Ruvik needed him to stay in this room. He was being pulled in two places at once, as though neither he nor this place could fully decide where Joseph was supposed to be; which one was supposed to be the real him.

He closed his eyes and opened them again to find himself back in the park, his eyes staring straight at the pale boy. He knew that the boy had to be important. He knew that. His feet were taking him closer to the pale boy seemingly without his permission. He wanted to scream. He didn’t understand anything anymore. Sebastian and Ruvik were pulling him in two different places and somehow this child _mattered._

He had almost reached his target when the pale boy opened his mouth and started to scream. His voice was loud and piercing. It made the ground shake, made the glass on nearby buildings shatter and fall to the ground.

Joseph understood. Whatever level of power he thought he possessed, the young man in front of him put his own miracles to shame.

Joseph slammed his hands over his ears, and tried to keep his footing. His body was pulling at him, insisting that he should be wrapped up in chains, unable to move, but he had to keep fighting. He had to stay in the park long enough to find at least _some_ answers.

The pale boy started to run.

Time seemed to slow down as Kidman moved her gun to aim it at the boy once more. Any second now she would pull the trigger.

Joseph could see what a terrible idea that would be. He wasn’t sure whether Kidman could. Whoever this boy was, the last thing that they should have been doing was attacking him. Besides, Joseph wasn’t even sure the three of them would be able to successfully hurt him at all, especially with his own self being torn in two as it was.

Kidman pulled the trigger.

“Don’t do it!” Joseph screamed, as he jumped between Kidman and the boy.

The bullet hit him with so much force that he fell to the ground. He lurched back into the tiled room, where his body was pinned to the wall. He flopped forward, grateful now for the chains that kept him in place. He was… he was having so much trouble focussing.

He had been shot, right?

But no, he couldn’t have been shot. He couldn’t acknowledge the fact that he had been shot, otherwise then he really would be in trouble. He tried to focus on the screens in front of him. He could see himself lying on the ground in the middle of the park. Everything was falling down around him, the buildings collapsing into dust and the ground opening up to swallow him whole.

He was falling… falling…

He couldn’t breathe. He gasped and choked, and when he finally coughed he coughed up blood, the thick red liquid falling down to stain the pure white tiles below, and dribble down his chin.

His glasses began to fall from his face, and he could do nothing as they fell to the ground in front of him. He heard something shatter and prayed that the noise had come from the glass of one of the collapsing buildings and not from his glasses. He couldn’t see well enough to tell though. The only thing that he could make out on the floor was the patch of red on the white tiles.

He had a feeling that at some stage he passed out, but he couldn’t be entirely sure. There was no peaceful office at the KCPD station waiting for him anymore. No Sebastian, real or fake. The world around him was so confusing, and everything was pain. Joseph wondered if someone, somewhere, thought of him as being a little bit dead, and whether that might have been affecting his ability to heal, or whether it was just Ruvik’s chains, pinning him here and restricting his abilities.

He still had the screens though, and that might have been worth something if he could actually make out the images on them with any clarity. The next time he awoke he tried to focus on them, tried to find out what Sebastian had been doing. While he had been drifting in and out of consciousness he had been able to make out the sounds of screaming and gunfire, but that had been about it. He had no idea what had happened to Sebastian, but he was presumably still alive. Joseph had to believe that he was still alive. After all, surely, if something had happened to Sebastian then somehow Joseph would know.

He strained against his chains, and succeeded at least in lifting his head and staring at one of the largest screens. The image there flickered, and he thought he could make out the dark hair and pale sleeves of his partner as Sebastian made his way through the world. There was so much blood, so much screaming, and so very much violence; even more than Joseph had been subjected to.

Joseph drifted in and out of consciousness, and when he came back to himself there was always the screens in front of him; showing him blurred images of his partner, fighting against creatures that could only have come from the darkest corner of nightmares.

* * *

The next time Joseph awoke he could hear Ruvik’s voice emerging from the screen.

“… I was aware of every slice, every severed nerve.”

Was Ruvik talking to Sebastian? Sebastian wasn’t saying anything. What was happening?

“Every tug of flesh pulled away from my bones until absolute darkness overtook me. Darkness and pain. A thousand other sensations as they probed my cerebrum, examined my work. An eternity of intensity: pain, pleasure, rage, ecstasy, blending together into a single, piercing noise, until the darkness was broken by sparks, like twinkling starlight. The pain, the noise, the light blends together. Takes shape. It’s a place I know so well. My prison… My home…”

The words spoke to Joseph in a way that was far more complicated than simple verbal communication. Joseph _understood_ what Ruvik meant, and wondered whether Sebastian understood it as well.

This place. This prison. It was Ruvik’s masterpiece. Ruvik might have controlled it, but Ruvik wanted _out_ , and somehow, some way, he was going to manipulate events to make it so.

”Sebastian,” Joseph tried to call out to his partner, but his voice was still too weak, barely more than a whisper, and before long he felt the darkness claim him once more.

* * *

Joseph was awoken by a series of clanking and scraping noises that were far too familiar. His heart thudded in his chest, the noise immediately sending his body to a fully alert state, adrenaline thrumming through his veins.

The Keeper was nowhere near _him_ though. Instead the sound was coming from the televisions in front of him. Sebastian was fighting the Keeper. Joseph couldn’t bring himself to relax though, and his heart continued to thunder in the confines of his chest even as he tried to calm himself down. It wasn’t until much later, when the sounds of metallic scraping and gunfire had finally ceased, that Joseph was finally allowed back into the peace and silence of oblivion.

* * *

The next time he awoke the images on the screen were a jumbled mess of reds; the colours of blood and flesh. He couldn’t make out what was happening anymore, but he could still hear the sounds of Sebastian screaming loudly and cursing beneath his breath. Sebastian was still alive. That was… that was something.

Joseph found himself sobbing. He was just so tired. He wanted to break free from these chains. He wanted to remove the bullet from his torso. He could still feel it there, lodged inside his chest; could still feel a slow stream of blood as it trickled out from his wound.

But how? How could that have happened? He had been shot in the park, not here. Here he was supposed to be safe. Ruvik said that he should have been _safe._ Just when Joseph thought that he was getting a handle on this world and all of its messed up rules, something like this came along and made it seem as though the world had shifted sideways around him again.

Suddenly the world around Joseph began to shake. It wasn’t the gentle rumbling of an earthquake. Joseph had survived a couple of those before the Beacon incident, and knew that they didn’t feel like this. This was a more violent lurching, as though the world had suddenly been forced off-balance.

The walls shook and rumbled. Joseph stared at the screens in front of him, trying to make sense of the blurry, fast-moving images that he saw, but it was impossible.

There was an explosion of sound and colour, all of it magnified a hundred fold thanks to the screens in front of him. Joseph blinked and a hundred different images flashed in front of his eyes; Sebastian and Myra smiling on their wedding day, the Protected lashing out at Joseph, Ruvik smiling at him, Kidman smiling at him, and then the frightened face she had worn when Joseph had been trying to kill her.

“He’s not yours,” Kidman told Joseph. He didn’t remember her saying anything like that before now, but he just found himself closing his eyes and nodding in response.

Another voice addressed him, and he couldn’t quite work out whether it was Sebastian or Ruvik speaking. He didn’t know why. Their voices were not all that similar, and he didn’t think he would have ever had trouble distinguishing between the two of them in any other situation.

“I’m leaving now,” the voice said. “Goodbye Joseph.”

“Goodbye?” he murmured beneath his breath.

The ground shook again. The wall behind Joseph started shaking and shifting until it started to tear itself apart. A large crack opened in the ceiling, and continued to spread wider, until Joseph could see the sky above.

Clouds rolled overhead. Not normal clouds. No fluffy white and grey things for this world. The clouds that rolled in were red with patches of black and dark grey; the colours of blood, and ash and fire, of the last glowing embers before the fire flickered out altogether.

The wall that Joseph had been pinned to soon crumbled, making Joseph fall to the floor. He groaned, but after a few moments he was picking himself up off the floor and removing the chains from around his body. It wasn’t easy considering the entire world was still shaking and crumbling all around him, but he was eventually free. He was finally given a chance to attend to the bullet wound in his torso, an easy task without the chains binding his abilities.

The next step was to find his glasses. He found them eventually, lying beneath a large chunk of what had once been the ceiling of his prison, and let out a cry of disbelief when he discovered that remarkably, they were completely undamaged.

The screens in front of Joseph and the world around him suddenly came into sharp focus as he returned his glasses to their proper place. He was barely given any chance to make sense out of the images on the screens in front of him; a close-up of what looked to be a human brain, a monster larger than any of those that he had fought so far, Sebastian holding what looked to be a rocket launcher; before one by one the televisions in front of him began to blink out.

The ground was still shaking, and as Joseph looked around he could tell that it was definitely not a localised incident. Everywhere he looked the ground was tearing itself apart; buildings and twisted tunnels and anything else that the disturbed residents of STEM might have constructed toppling to the ground, crumbling as though they were as insubstantial as the thoughts and fears that had brought them all to life.

Barbed wire sprung from some of the newly formed cracks in the ground like weeds, and climbed up the walls, leaving red-brown rust wherever they went. Everywhere Joseph looked the world was changing. Not too far away from him a pool of blood seemed to dry up within seconds, leaving only old, stained bones behind, and over in another direction an entire highway was swallowed up by the ground, only to be replaced, seconds later, with a dark, pointed tower like something out of the darkest fairy tale anyone had ever read, it’s spires decorated with corpses.

Without Ruvik there was nothing to keep the world stable, and it was tearing itself apart, the strain of too many broken minds pulling it in too many different directions at once threatening to plunge them all into the abyss.

And Joseph knew, almost instinctively, that if the world was to fall apart while they were all still in there then none of them would ever escape. They would be stuck in there, no longer able to be resuscitated or rescued, doomed to wander as lost men and women while their nightmares looped over and over again in their heads.

There had to be some way that he could stabilise things once more. At the very least he had to be able to protect his little place in this world and make sure that nothing happened to him. Hell, if Ruvik could manipulate this world on such a large scale and keep it relatively stable then there was no reason that Joseph couldn’t do the same.

Ruvik had help though. They may have been monsters, but they had helped Ruvik when he needed it. Perhaps Joseph needed the same; a creature that would attack on his command, who would stand by his side and protect him against all of this world’s horrors.

There was only one creature that he knew for sure had been his creation; one that had been pulled from the depths of his own dark, twisted psyche.

He bowed his head, trying not to pay too much attention to the walls that were crumbling all around him, or the way that the ground was shaking and splitting into a hundred different pieces beneath him.

“Protected,” he whispered. “I call on you now.”

Joseph wasn’t sure what he expected; perhaps for the Protected to suddenly appear in front of him as though it had always been there? It would certainly fit the way that this world normally worked.

What he hadn’t expected was for chains to suddenly shoot out of the cracks in the ground. They flew up into the air and then slammed back down onto the ground around him. One of them flew over Joseph’s head and embedded itself in the ground right behind him, the heavy metal of the chain coming to rest gently on the back of his shoulder, almost like an embrace.

The chains groaned and shook, and eventually the Protected’s cage started to emerge from the centre of the chains, shuddering and screeching as it clawed its way out of the ground.

The Protected moaned in pain, and then the cage toppled in front of Joseph, the Protected letting out another cry as it fell on its side. The creature’s skin still looked to be burned in places, but the mask that covered its face had returned.

Joseph immediately moved to help it back up, trying to suppress his natural revulsion at the creature’s appearance as he did. He had created this thing. He was responsible for it. No matter how hideous or disturbing it might be, he needed to own that; needed to trust his own, horribly flawed imagination if he wanted to get through this.

The creature was heavy, but between Joseph’s help and its own strength together they were able to right it and get it back on what had to pass as the creature’s feet. Once it was stable it whined at Joseph and reached out for him.

“No,” he told it. “Not yet. You could hurt yourself.”

He should have been more worried for himself. The creature could have easily impaled him if it wasn’t careful, but he knew how this creature worked now. He might not have been comfortable with its existence, but he needed to acknowledge the emotions that had allowed it to come into being if he wanted it to be of any use at all.

Joseph approached the creature slowly and cautiously, trying to focus on the Protected, and not on the world that was falling apart around them.

He reached out one hand towards the Protected, aiming for a patch of clear, undamaged skin. The Protected let out an unhappy whimper and tried to pull away from him at first, regarding Joseph with one dark eye, its fear clear on the small part of its face that Joseph could actually see.

“You’re scared of me, huh?” Joseph said, trying to speak in a soothing tone as he did. “I suppose I can’t blame you for that.”

His hand came to rest on the Protected’s skin. He had feared that it would be gross to the touch; either slimy or scaly and rough, but he discovered that the texture of the creature’s dark, burned skin was not much different to that of a normal human being.

“I’m sorry,” he told it. After all, the last time he had seen it, he had set it alight. He could only imagine how much pain he had caused it.

“I didn’t know,” he continued. “I promise I won’t hurt you again, all right?”

The Protected let out a happy little hum of contentment.

“Now, I need you to hold still for a second,” Joseph told it.

Joseph summoned an axe. It came immediately to his hand. Joseph wondered if he should be surprised at how easily it came to him, but it made sense. Nothing was keeping reality together anymore; nothing was forcing this world to make sense, not now that Ruvik was gone.

He started to hack at the metal that encaged the Protected, the axe making short work of the old, twisted iron bars. Once half of them had been bent or removed completely, the Protected proved strong enough to break out of the rest of its confines with only a little help from Joseph.

It pressed against him, making a happy trilling noise that sounded more birdlike than humanoid as it did. Joseph pushed the creature’s affectionate gesture aside, as he might have with a particularly large and overly friendly dog, wary of the spines of glass that still protruded out from its body at odd angles.

Joseph eyed one of the largest nearby pieces of glass, took a deep breath, and then flexed his fingers.

“All right,” he said. “I suppose the next step is to get rid of those.”

He was glad that he always insisted on wearing thick leather gloves as he reached out and grabbed the large piece of glass. He gripped it tightly, aiming to pull it out in one swift movement, but he had barely begun when the Protected let out a howl of pain.

“It’ll only hurt for a moment,” Joseph told it, and tried to pull again, but the glass was firmly stuck.

The Protected screamed again, and fixed Joseph with a filthy look that promised violence should Joseph try again.

The glass had barely budged. Joseph sighed and nodded, figuring that the glass was as much a part of the creature as its hair or skin, and decided to leave it right where it was.

He needed to focus on the rest of the world now anyway. It was still crumbling and falling to pieces, objects flickering through a dozen different forms as they fell, all of them trying to latch on to something stable and none of them able to find anything. Walls turned from tile to bloodied concrete to a mass of writhing flesh. An entire building near Joseph collapsed into a wide, murky lake of water that quickly disappeared, the water falling into the abyss that was quickly forming all around him.

The world needed a new host; needed new memories and fears and desires to draw from. If left to the undead that Joseph had continually gone up against then they would probably be left in a maze of darkness and barbed wire; all the horror of Ruvik’s vision with none of the control. He could do better than that. He had to.

A tangle of barbed wire shot out from one of the nearby walls, catching one of Joseph’s sleeves and cutting the skin beneath. Joseph did not move, but the creature in front of him let out a distinctly unhappy whine and nudged it’s forehead against Joseph’s shoulder.

Joseph somehow understood what the creature wanted. It wanted to protect him. Joseph untangled his bloodied arm from the barbed wire and then moved closer to the large being, huddling beneath its bulk and trying to ignore its cry as it took the next lashing of barbed wire, and then the next.

Joseph realised the creature was leaving a dark, bloody stain all over one of his sleeves.

“That’s disgusting Seb,” he told it, but he didn’t move. Not yet.

The barbed wire soon gave way and disappeared, but the clouds did not let up, and the ground did not stop breaking apart.

Joseph and the Protected huddled together as the entire world around them was plunged into darkness.

And then, somewhere in the darkness, there was a spark.

And then another.

Soon they were lighting up the darkness around Joseph, like a hundred stars, twinkling above him…


	14. The Return

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: The Return

Sebastian took several deep breaths and tried to prepare himself. It was tough though, considering he had absolutely no idea what he would be going up against.

The last time he had been stuck inside STEM it had felt as though he had been in there for weeks, when in reality only a few hours had passed in the outside world. Whether it had really taken hours or weeks, he _was_ sure that the experience had taken years off his life.

The eggheads at the station had tried explaining it to him; something about the brain being able to process memories and new data much faster than someone could actually experience them, but all that Sebastian knew, all that he really cared about, was that his partner Joseph Oda was still stuck inside STEM. He hadn’t made it out.

Joseph had been plugged into STEM for two weeks now, and if several hours was enough for Sebastian to have experienced what he had then he almost didn’t want to know what Joseph had been through.

It had taken Sebastian several days of shouting and ranting before the KCPD brass would even listen to him. In a way he couldn’t blame them. The whole case sounded more like something out of a bad sci-fi or horror movie than an actual case, and the few subjects that they had managed to rescue from Beacon Mental Hospital had all been either completely incoherent, or had died almost as soon as they had been unplugged.

There had been no sign of Joseph.

It had taken over a week of constant searching before they finally found him. It hadn’t been easy, and Sebastian himself had gone through a lot in that time. None of that mattered to him now though. The important thing was that they had finally found Joseph, and Sebastian had finally been given a chance to save him from STEM.

From what little the KCPD science team was able to tell from its observations, Joseph’s mind still appeared to be in good condition, and despite the chaos that should have spread throughout STEM when Ruvik had left, Joseph’s area at least was relatively stable. They were all so inexperienced with this sort of strange technology that no-one was able to predict what would happen when they unplugged Joseph, or what sort of mental state the other man would be in when they did.

Sebastian had been given a very strict set of instructions. He was to go back inside STEM, find Joseph and assess his current mental state. If Joseph was still coherent then Sebastian was supposed to do whatever he could to help him escape STEM. If not; if Joseph had turned into a drooling vegetable, megalomaniac or one of the undead that Sebastian had spent so much of his time fighting the last time around then Sebastian was under instructions to exit STEM as soon as possible, leaving Joseph behind, his fate to be settled by a committee of KCPD officials.

Sebastian scoffed at that idea. There was no force in heaven or hell that could convince him to leave Joseph behind this time, and he would be damned if he left his partner’s fate in the hands of cold-hearted scientists. They would probably decide to leave Joseph plugged in for weeks or months until it was ‘safe’ to extract him, or that the best course of action would be to put Joseph out of his misery.

There was no way in hell that Sebastian was going to let either of those things happen. He was going to save Joseph, no matter what it took.

After all, if he had to credit Ruvik and STEM for one thing then it was making him realize exactly how much he cared about Joseph; how lost Sebastian would be if anything were to happen to him,

Oh, there had always been something there, but there had always been something to stop Sebastian from acting on his feelings; first Myra, and then the depression and alcoholism that had followed her disappearance. Now though?

He was going to find Joseph Oda, he was going to get him out of STEM, and then, when everything had settled down and he was sure that the both of them were safe, he was going to wrap his arms around his partner and never let him go again.

He nodded to the technician that was assisting him with re-entering STEM, took one last deep breath, and was plugged into the machine.

* * *

Sebastian’s first time entering STEM had been an enormous shock. Everything had been disorienting and confusing and nothing made sense. He had been hoping that it had only been a side-effect of being plugged in involuntarily, but entering STEM on his own terms really wasn’t much better.

He had been expecting roughly the same décor as the last time; blood and barbed wire and old crumbling bricks. After all, the way he experienced STEM was, according to the eggheads at the station, supposed to be based on his own subconscious. That little gem of information had made him a little worried about his own sanity for a while, but he had gotten over it pretty quickly when he remembered what Ruvik and all of STEM’s other captives had dreamed up.

This time he seemed to be surrounded by dark metal girders and tall spikes of broken glass. He could hear the clanking of metal on metal, and it took him a moment to realize that he himself was being held up several feet off the floor by a series of thick metal chains that wrapped around his torso and both of arms.

With a small amount of strength and a large amount of cursing, he managed to pull one of his arms out of the tangled mess of chains, and then the other, leaving him suspended only by the thick coils around his torso. Without the extra chains around his arms the ones around his stomach began to ride up, until they were pressing rather painfully into his ribs and chest.

He struggled against them, which only served to make the chains ride higher. He was having trouble breathing now, and he had no idea how he was supposed to fit his arms through the chains, or struggle out of them without breaking at least several ribs. He really hadn’t thought this through.

He took a quick look at his surroundings, his eyes eventually settling on a series of bent and broken metal pylons a few feet from where he hung. If he could swing himself over to them then he might be able to get some leverage and climb up and out of the chains.

He began kicking his legs backwards and forwards, and before long he had gained enough momentum that he was swinging several feet to either side, the chains rattling and digging further into his chest as he did. He would be sporting some very painful bruises on his chest before all of this was over, but they would, along with any other injuries he gained while attempting to save Joseph, be worth it. After all, it wasn’t as though he would keep them when he left STEM.

Eventually he swung far enough that he was able to grab one of the metal pylons. It was sharper than it looked, and Sebastian cursed as the palm of his hand was cut open. The sudden pain and slippery blood caused him to let go of the metal, and he went swinging back the other way.

It took him several more swings before he was able to grab the metal pylon again, and in that time he had managed to prepare himself, tearing off part of his vest (he had been hoping to use the whole vest, but the chains that were wrapped tightly around his chest prevented him from being able to remove any more than a single panel of torn fabric) and wrapping it around one of his hands.

He clung to the pylon with one blood-soaked hand, fighting the pull of the chains and gravity as they tried to drag him back down. With a bit of wriggling and maneuvering he was able to remove a couple of coils of chain from around his chest.

Sebastian experienced a moment of triumph as he felt the chains shift and loosen around him. Then his grip on the pylon slipped, and he fell back down. Sebastian tensed in anticipation of the pain that would undoubtedly wrack his upper torso when the chains caught him.

The chains _did_ catch him, but not completely. They shifted and tangled around part of his upper torso and one of his arms. Then gravity caught him and he slipped again, falling several more feet before a couple of the chains wrapped around one of his arms, leaving him dangling in mid-air for a few seconds, before suddenly dropping him completely and letting him fall onto the ground far below.

Sebastian stumbled as he landed and ended up on his hands and knees. The ground gave way a little beneath his weight and seeped some sort of foul liquid, putting Sebastian in mind of a soaked sponge. The liquid that stained his hands and knees wasn’t blood only by virtue of being too pale and weak. Perhaps it was blood mixed with something else?

He stumbled to his feet and pressed his hands to his chest, and then the rest of his body, checking for any injuries that he might have sustained during his rather painful re-entry into STEM. He hurt, and he was fairly sure that he had a broken rib or two, but there was nothing life threatening. The ground had admittedly been softer than he had anticipated, but Sebastian still felt as though he had gotten off too lightly. STEM, it seemed, might have grown a lot kinder during his absence.

Sebastian had thought that he was about as prepared to come back into STEM as he could be. The environment was just as he remembered it; dark and violent; the walls broken and stained and the floor covered in small mysterious lumps that he didn’t want his thoughts lingering on for too long, but which could very well be the remains of one of STEM’s unfortunate inhabitants. The smell though; he hadn’t remembered the smell, and the acrid stench of rotting flesh and medicinal alcohol assailed his nose so strongly that he thought he might vomit.

_This is all in your mind_ , he tried to tell himself as he looked around and tried to get his bearings.  _That smell isn’t real. None of this real. Your ribs aren’t even really broken._

It was hard to remember that however, when every one of his senses was telling him otherwise, and it certainly didn’t help that he now knew that dying in here had a very real effect on his body outside of STEM. If any of the monsters in here killed him then he would never wake up again.

_Don’t think about that_ , he told himself. He had to find Joseph. That was what was important now.

The last time he had been inside STEM he had found weapons. He had a feeling that he’d still need them, despite the fact that Ruvik was no longer in control.

After all STEM, even without Ruvik’s influence, was not a friendly place. It preyed on a person’s fears and anxieties, tormenting them to the point of self-destruction unless; he had been assured; you were particularly calm and careful or, as was the case with Sebastian, incredibly stubborn. How Joseph had managed to survive for this long was anyone’s guess, but the monitors had shown healthy brain activity and vitals. Sebastian was sure Joseph would be fine as long as he found him and helped him to wake up.

A quick reconnaissance of the area gave Sebastian a shotgun, as well as the standard issue pistol that he had entered STEM with, and which still sat reliably in its holster on his belt. It wasn’t much compared to the arsenal that he had possessed by the end of his last stint in STEM, but it was a good start.

Sebastian took a moment to check the ammunition in his guns, before making his way forward. There was only one exit out of the large chamber, and it lead to a long, winding passage that never seemed to end. The passage was thin, so thin that at times he had to squeeze through cracks sideways, his skin and clothes staining thanks to the liquid or gore on the walls, and tearing where they brushed against broken glass or other sharp objects. The ceiling on the other hand was impossibly high above him, making Sebastian wonder whether he had managed to find himself trapped at the bottom of one of the tears that had opened in the earth here.

He was on edge the whole time, just waiting for one of the Haunted or some other monstrosity, to leap out and attack him. Surely it was only a matter of time. And yet the further he progressed, the more lifeless and empty this section of STEM proved to be. Maybe he had been outside of STEM long enough that all the other residents had been killed, either by their neighbors or their own delusions.

He wasn’t sure this meant anything good as far as Joseph’s fate was concerned. There was certainly a lot more greenery than there had been the last time; the broken metal and shards of glass slowly being replaced with dark, vine-covered glades, and swamps made from a noxious liquid which appeared to be a mixture of blood, alcohol and something else which smelled completely foul.

In short STEM seemed to be very different, and a lot calmer, but no less unsettling, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that it was still dangerous.

Then he turned a corner and discovered that the room in front of him was covered in barbed wire traps.

Sebastian frowned. Barbed wire and death traps had both been perfectly normal parts of STEM when it had been under Ruvik’s control. In fact he couldn’t even count how many he had been forced to disarm the last time.

It only took one look at the nearest device for him to realize that he was hopelessly outmatched. These were not the simple traps that Ruvik had been able to construct; rather they were modern, sophisticated, technological marvels; the sort of the thing that someone with a brilliant mind and proper training in explosives might create; someone like his partner.

With that thought in mind Sebastian began to focus on sneaking around the various traps rather than wasting his time attempting to disarm them. He stepped around mines, ducked or crawled beneath barbed trip-wires, and stayed as far away from the explosives on the walls, with their digital displays and half-dozen fail-safes, as he possibly could.

He followed the traps and devices, hoping that they might eventually lead him to Joseph. He kept an eye out for other signs of his partner as well, hoping that some vision or clue would call memories of his partner to mind and assure him that he was on the right track.

When he finally found his clue, it was hardly the subtle hint that he had expected. He had been travelling down a corridor that was lit only by a flickering red light, and which had only just begun to be overrun by the filthy swamp and broken steel that he had observed in other parts of STEM.

There, on the floor right in front of him, lay an old, faded and cracked photograph. It looked vaguely familiar, and when Sebastian picked it up he discovered that it was a photograph of himself and Joseph. His hand was on Joseph’s shoulder, and the two of them were smiling at the camera. He couldn’t remember why. The photo looked old, as though it had been lying, forgotten and gathering dust in the hallway for years.

He picked it up, running a thumb over the faded image of Joseph for a moment. When he cleared some of the grime from the top of the photograph he realized that dark writing had been scrawled all over the image, although it was just as faded as the photo, and particularly difficult to read in the flickering red light. He eventually made it out though.

“You cannot save him,” he read out loud.

He frowned at the photograph.

“Bullshit I can’t,” he cursed angrily. He was going to save Joseph. Fucking piece of paper; telling him what he couldn’t do. He was tempted to scrunch the photo into a ball in his hand, or tear the offending message in two. Instead he simply let it fall to the ground as he continued on.

He took a deep breath as he reached out to the double doors in front of him and pushed them open.

The lighting in the next room was even worse than it had been in the hallway. There were dead bodies everywhere in this room, as well as an assortment of disturbingly familiar furniture. At first he thought that this room was just as lifeless as all the others that he had traversed up until that moment, but he was only given a couple of seconds to stare at this room’s strange furnishings before a loud clanking noise drew his attention upwards.

In the shadows near the room’s high ceiling, something was moving. Something large.

He couldn’t make out much beyond long limbs and a bulbous, misshapen torso, but what he could see made him instinctively reach for his shotgun. He wondered whether he stood any chance at all of sneaking past the beast, but even if he was able to, he couldn’t see any way out of the room, except the door he had used to enter it, and even if he couldn’t see much of the creature, he could  _feel_  it’s eyes on him, watching his every move.

Sebastian only made it a few more steps before the creature fell to the ground in front of him, its bulk only missing him by a few inches. Chains, just like the ones that Sebastian had woken up in, trailed behind the creature and flew around Sebastian, one of them passing so closely to Sebastian’s face that one of its sharp edges left the tiniest of scratches on Sebastian’s cheek.

The creature snorted and snuffled, and then rose up on its haunches, towering over Sebastian. It let out a loud moan. It was possible that the creature was attempting to roar at Sebastian, but the mask that covered half of its face muffled and warped the noise. It was clear that the creature was attempting to be intimidating, and although the noise may not have put Sebastian on his guard, the size of the creature certainly did.

“All right,” Sebastian muttered to himself as he pointed the shotgun at the creature, ready to shoot it as soon as it made a single hostile move. “You’re not going to give me a warm up this time, huh? Just straight to the big assholes.”

Sebastian told himself that he was not scared. He had fought worse than this thing the last time, and somehow he had survived. Nothing, not STEM or this thing, whatever it was, was going to keep him from finding Joseph and rescuing his partner.

“Bring it on.” 

The creature lashed out at Sebastian with one of its long, sharply clawed hands. He tried to jump out of the way. The creature missed him for the most part, but one of its long claws tore through his shirt and scratched the skin beneath.

Sebastian cursed under his breath and shot at the creature’s hand. It screamed and pulled the injured limb back towards the center of its body, cradling it and staring at Sebastian as though he had somehow betrayed it.

The creature was fast for its size, and charged towards Sebastian, long heavy chains trailing behind it like weird, metallic tentacles. Sebastian dodged around the side of the creature and shot it a few more times. He was already running low on shotgun ammo, and the creature showed no signs of slowing down any time soon.

“Dammit!” Sebastian cursed as he leapt out of the way of another of the creature’s flailing attacks. The creature moved quickly in order to keep track of Sebastian, slamming into one of the nearby couches as it did. Its chains swung around, the whiplash sending them straight towards Sebastian. He leapt back again, dodging the chains, but also falling back onto his arse in the process.

The ground was sticky and wet, which made his fall more uncomfortable than painful, but which also gave him an idea. The last time he had been inside STEM, he had discovered that out of all of the tools in his arsenal, one of the most powerful had been the simple match.

He searched through his pockets, hoping that he would still have some on him. If he was lucky and timed this right then he would only need the one.

Sebastian grinned in triumph when his hand settled on a small box in his pants pocket. Opening the box revealed a good half-dozen matches lying within, just waiting for Sebastian to need their help lighting some arsehole monster like this one on fire.

Sebastian took a couple of steps back, making sure that he was on relatively dry land, and then, his heart pounding as the monster charged towards him, he lit the match and threw it in the nearest pool of liquid right as the monster was charging through it.

The liquid immediately caught on fire, as did the monster, the flames moving up to cover the monster’s entire body quicker than should have been possible. It flailed and thrashed, and let out a scream that sounded a little too close to human and a little too familiar for Sebastian’s comfort.

Sebastian moved back a few more steps as the creature continued to lash out at him. It whimpered and moaned as the fire slowly consumed it.

The lights in the large round room suddenly flickered to life, bathing the entire area in a relatively strong and stable white light. Sebastian looked around himself anxiously. The creature in front of him ceased its thrashing, letting out the most pathetic, pained whimpers and cries as it did.

A crack started to appear in the wall on one side of the room. The wall shuddered and the crack widened, until there was a perfectly normal looking wooden door standing there where nothing but plain concrete had existed moments before.

Sebastian started to move towards the door, wary of it but, considering it was the only way forward, still intending to use it to leave. He had only moved a few steps however when the door opened without his help and a figure walked though; a figure that made Sebastian stop dead in his tracks.

“Joseph,” he muttered softly.

He had told himself that when he found Joseph he would run up to the other man and wrap his arms around him in the tightest hug imaginable. He would tell Joseph how he felt and apologize for leaving him alone for so long and beg Joseph to never leave his side again.

At the very least the sight of his partner should have caused him to smile, but there was something about Joseph now that stopped the smile from forming on his face, made his palms sweaty and turned his heart to ice.

There was a coldness in Joseph’s demeanor that Sebastian wasn’t sure he had ever seen before, even when Sebastian’s grief and the IA investigation had driven a wedge between them. 

Joseph turned to look at Sebastian, and Sebastian felt himself shudder beneath the other man’s gaze. It was as though Joseph was looking straight through him; as though, as far as Joseph was concerned, Sebastian wasn’t even there.

He turned away from Sebastian, and began to walk straight towards the monster in the middle of the room. He reached out towards the creature, petting its head affectionately, as though the monster was nothing more than a wounded dog.

“Joseph!?” Sebastian cried out, barely able to believe his eyes. Joseph was so calm. Why wasn’t he running away from that thing? For a moment Sebastian wondered whether Joseph could even see or hear him, or whether, for some reason, Sebastian had become completely invisible and silent to Joseph, but then Joseph turned around and looked straight at him once more, once again with those same cold, unfeeling eyes.

“Please don’t try to burn the Protected,” Joseph told him, very calmly and firmly, as though he was talking to a petulant child rather than his old partner. “You know that he doesn’t like it.”

“What the hell are you talking about Joseph!?”

Joseph just sighed and adjusted his glasses, a habit Sebastian knew he had when he was thinking deeply, or trying to hide something. He had been doing it a lot in the few weeks leading up to their initial entry into STEM.

“Didn’t I tell you to disappear?” Joseph said, sounding tired, as though this was part of an old argument rather than something Sebastian had just stumbled into. He had no idea what he was supposed to say.

“For good this time. Losing the jacket isn’t going to trick me,” Joseph continued, confusing Sebastian even more. “I don’t need you anymore. You know that. I know that. Why do you keep coming back?”

“I came back in here to rescue you Joseph,” Sebastian replied. “What the hell has happened to you?”

“You came back?” Joseph shook his head, looking as though he was only seconds away from laughing. “You expect me to believe that you actually escaped this hell and then you willingly came back in here?”

“Of course I did Joseph. I couldn’t leave you behind.”

Joseph smiled in response to that. It was not a particularly friendly smile though. Instead it looked as though Joseph was unable to accept that what Sebastian had said could be anything more than a joke.

“You’re not real,” Joseph said, shaking his head at Sebastian.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Sebastian objected. “Of course I’m real.”

“Sometimes I think you’ve never been real. Not in here.”

Sebastian was really starting to worry about his partner.

“This place has gotten to you Joseph,” he said. “I need to get you out of here, as soon as physically possible.”

“You really expect me to believe that you’ve come back in here, of your own free will, just so you can save me?” Joseph said, still smiling.

“Because I have,” Sebastian told him, even though he had a feeling that Joseph didn’t trust a single world that he said.

“But why?” he asked Sebastian. “Why would you do that?”

Sebastian sighed, and tried not to be angry with Joseph. After all, he had thought similar of himself more than once, when he had been a drunken wreck of a man, and Joseph had been the only one to stay by his side, the only one who would dare yell at him when he needed it, or snatch the bottle from his hand; the only one who had reported him to I.A., not because he thought Sebastian was doing something wrong, but because Sebastian badly needed that sort of wakeup call; the only one who had just sat by him, holding Sebastian’s hand and listening to him rant, or holding a damp cloth to his face when the hangovers were particularly bad.

Yeah, he might be a little angry with Joseph, but only because Joseph couldn’t see how absolutely amazing he was. Of course Sebastian had come back for him. He had risked his life as many times as was necessary to ensure that Joseph stayed alive the last time that he was in STEM, and he intended to do the same this time around, as many times and as long as it was necessary, until he could be sure that the other man was safe and out of harm’s way.

Sebastian crossed his arms in front of his chest and regarded Joseph for a long few seconds. The other man looked to be getting rather nervous. Hell, Sebastian couldn’t blame him, not with how this place liked to play tricks on you. He wondered whether this place had shown Joseph images of himself before now. It would certainly explain a lot.

He took a deep breath and summoned up every ounce of courage he had. He dropped his arms to his side, his hands clenching and unclenching nervously in response. He could do this. He had been through many more difficult moments than this.

“Sebastian?” Joseph asked, and it was then that Sebastian realized he had just been silently standing there in front of Joseph for what was becoming an awkwardly long time.

Damn it. This was harder than he had thought it would be. Then again, he hadn’t expected to do this while the two of them were still trapped inside STEM. He had planned to wait at least until they were out of here and both completely safe.

But Joseph needed a wakeup call. He needed Sebastian to do something completely unexpected; something that Joseph would never imagine Sebastian doing in a million years. Even if Joseph completely rejected him, it would be worth it if it meant Sebastian could get his partner out of there.

So Sebastian walked straight up to Joseph, wrapped his arms around the other man, and kissed him.


	15. Escape

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here we go guys. This is it. There will be one more chapter after this, but it will be pretty short; more of a coda/epilogue than a proper chapter. Considering that I'm hoping to have it posted by the end of tomorrow. 
> 
> I'd like to thank everyone for sticking with me through all of this and for all of your kudos and kind words. This one is dedicated to all of you. :)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Escape

At first Joseph was too shocked to do anything, his body immediately tensing so much that he didn’t move, even forgot to breathe for a few seconds.

Sebastian was kissing him. Sebastian Castellanos, his partner, the man that Joseph had spent years worrying about, watching over and pining for, was actually kissing him.

But then the first few seconds of shock and confusion lost some of their power and he found himself able to think in a manner that was at least vaguely reminiscent of a sane, rational human being once more. He sighed, relaxing into Sebastian’s touch, not from bliss, but because he was sorely disappointed, both with this world he had created and with himself.

They were really doing this again, were they? It had been so long since his mind had played this trick on him. He had really thought that he had gotten over this sort of pathetic behavior. Sebastian kissing him; as though that could be ever be anything more than a delusion.

This Sebastian wasn’t real after all. He couldn’t be. Joseph should have known that this was just another trick, but for a moment there he had actually let himself believe… He had actually let himself hope that this… that this Sebastian was…

He was about to pull away, to push Sebastian back and demand that his world stop taunting him in such a painful manner, but then something amazing happened.

The kiss wasn’t perfect. Far from it in fact.

Any other time that Sebastian (or the fake Sebastians that insisted on tormenting his already fragile psyche) had kissed him it had been perfect, the two of them melting against one another as though they had been made for it, like two puzzle pieces joining together. His bones had always turned to jelly and Sebastian had somehow instinctively known where to put his hands and how to move his mouth. It was like fireworks were going off in the sky above them; like Joseph would be happy if he could just spend the rest of his life kissing Sebastian.

This Sebastian’s kiss tasted like cheap old coffee and whatever it was that he had eaten for lunch earlier that day. Joseph could feel the other man’s stubble scraping gently at his skin. It was scratchy and not at all comfortable, and their teeth kept bumping into one another as Sebastian learned his way around Joseph’s mouth.

Joseph supposed that it was nice, but it was far from perfect.

But it couldn’t be real. Sebastian couldn’t really be kissing him. There was no way that Sebastian would have made his way back inside this hellscape just to rescue him, and the real Sebastian choosing to kiss him was just completely unthinkable.

Sebastian’s hands squeezed gently at each of Joseph’s arms, the touch perhaps a little too hard and clumsy to really be comforting, although that had probably been Sebastian’s attention, and Joseph startled as he realized that he hadn’t really reacted to the kiss in any way that counted. He hadn’t pulled back or discouraged Sebastian, but he hadn’t really kissed back either.

Joseph allowed himself to believe once more, that maybe, just maybe, this  _was_ the real Sebastian, and maybe, just maybe, Sebastian actually cared about him enough to come back and save him, and… and kiss him.

There was a gentle nip at Joseph’s bottom lip, and he moaned into the kiss, pressing against Sebastian and tangling his hands enthusiastically in the fabric of Sebastian’s vest and shirt, pulling the taller man closer.

He kissed back, pouring every ounce of longing and love and affection that he had ever felt for the other man into the kiss.

Sebastian finally seemed to relax as well, his arms slowly wrapping around Joseph’s back and holding him gently as they continued to kiss.

Joseph didn’t know how long they had been kissing when they finally pulled apart. They were both panting from lack of breath, and Sebastian was gloriously flushed, his pupils dilated so much that Joseph could barely see any brown.

“Was that real enough for you?” Sebastian asked him.

“Yeah,” Joseph breathed out. “I guess it was.”

Sebastian smiled then, and his smile seemed so sad and broken and fragile that Joseph thought the other man might be about to cry.

“You want to know why I came back for you?” Sebastian asked. “I came back because I love you Joseph. This whole mess with Ruvik and STEM and Mobius? It just made me realize how much. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you, whether to a haunted, or a monster, or to STEM itself. I still can’t bear it; can’t bear the thought of you, stuck in here…”

Sebastian glanced away then, although not before Joseph caught a glimpse of the tears that had started to form in the corners of his partner’s eyes. It was so very like Sebastian that Joseph started to smile, despite himself. Sebastian never had never been very comfortable being emotionally vulnerable in front of other people.

“So that’s why I’m here,” Sebastian finished, reaching down as he spoke to grab Joseph’s hands and enfold them in his own, Sebastian’s larger fingers moving to intertwine with Joseph’s.

His eyes, still glistening, caught Joseph’s own and held them. Joseph thought he might melt beneath the power of that gaze.

“So what do you say that you and I leave this place for good?”

Joseph didn’t know what to say. He felt sure that whatever words he chose were going to come out as an absolute mess. He wanted to tell Sebastian that his feelings were returned; that Joseph had been in love with him for years, but part of him didn’t want to say anything until he knew for sure that everything around him, including this Sebastian, was actually real, and the two of them were definitely safe.

Besides, there were more important things to worry about at that moment than confessions of love.

“I would love to Seb,” he said, his heart heavy, “but I don’t think it’s going to be that easy.”

“I never said it would be easy,” Sebastian said, letting one of his hands fall, but still holding tight onto Joseph with the other. Joseph felt ashamed when he realized that his gloves were still coated in blood and had left red smears all over Sebastian’s hands. “We need to get you out of this place.”

“And how exactly do we do that?” Joseph asked, letting himself be lead along gently by Sebastian. “How did you get out last time?”

“I went to Beacon Mental Hospital, just as you suggested,” Sebastian said. “I never got a chance to thank by the way. I might never have gotten out of here if it wasn’t for that. Hell, if it wasn’t for you then I probably would have been fucked a long time before that.”

Joseph thought that _he_ should probably be the one thanking _Sebastian_. After all, Sebastian had saved his life countless times, while Joseph had… what? Provided a little bit of advice and moral support? It hardly seemed like a fair trade.

Sebastian had lead them out of the Protected’s chamber. The monster let out a quiet whine that quickly faded as Joseph and Sebastian proceeded through the corridor of Joseph’s fortress. He paid a small amount of attention to where they were going, making sure that Sebastian’s presence in his realm hadn’t changed things around too much.

“All right,” Joseph said, when he was content that they were travelling in vaguely the right way. “So, all that you did was go to Beacon Mental Hospital and then you could suddenly leave?”

Sebastian cringed.

“Well, not quite. It wasn’t that simple. Did you ever come across Ruvik?” Sebastian asked. “Creepy pale guy? Tall? Burn scars?”

Joseph nodded.

“I killed him,” Sebastian said, “and that’s how I got out.”

“Well, we can’t exactly kill Ruvik again,” Joseph pointed out.

Then he began to worry. He had basically taken Ruvik’s place, after all. Would Joseph have to die in order for either of them to be free? No matter how Joseph thought about it, he wasn’t sure that it was possible for him to die inside this place and wake up safe and unharmed in the real world, even with his skills. He wasn’t sure it was something even Ruvik would have been able to do.

“We shouldn’t have to,” Sebastian said. “Last time he was trying to stop us from leaving. This time there’s nothing standing in our way. If we’re lucky we might even be able to just walk out of here.”

Joseph didn’t think it was going to be that easy, but he didn’t want to say anything to dampen Sebastian’s current optimism. Instead he just sighed, and continued to walk forward at Sebastian’s side, giving the other man’s hand a gentle squeeze as he did.

Sebastian’s appearance. The kiss. Sebastian’s insistence that they would be able to leave. It all felt completely unreal to Joseph; more like a dream than anything he had experienced in his world of late. He was afraid that it would all fade away into nothingness if he turned his back on Sebastian for even a second.

They stepped out into comparatively fresh air and sunlight for what felt like the first time in months to Joseph. He blinked and held one arm in front of his eyes, trying to block out the sun’s harsh rays. He reminded himself that they weren’t actually real, concentrated as much as possible and was pleased, if not surprised, when a few clouds swiftly rolled in to block the worst of the light.

Sebastian blinked a few times, looking up at the now overcast sky and then back down at Joseph.

“How did you do that?” he asked.

“You never worked out how to control it?” Joseph asked. He had assumed that Sebastian must have managed at least some level of conscious control if he had managed to defeat Ruvik and escape, but apparently not.

“No!” Sebastian said, sounding almost offended by Joseph’s suggestion. “I thought Ruvik was the only one that could do that! What other tricks have you been hiding?”

“I haven’t been hiding anything,” Joseph replied, dropping Sebastian’s hand. “Your presence just stopped me from doing any of this.”

“So you had superpowers, but only when no-one was looking?” Sebastian sniped.

Joseph ignored the other man and scanned the horizon. He soon located Beacon Mental Hospital. It looked to be at least a few miles away, but distances inside STEM could be deceiving. He had managed to keep the area around the fortress reasonably safe and stable, and he was sure that he could keep the two of them safe if they didn’t leave the immediate area; but those miles between the two locations; who knew what state those areas were in anymore, or how long it would actually take for the two of them to travel that far? He could try teleporting them, but he had never worked out how to predict exactly where he would end up. No matter how much he refined his other powers, teleportation still remained a highly imprecise art.

No; moving themselves in an attempt to reach Beacon made no sense. But moving Beacon closer to them?

Now that was something Joseph was sure he could do.

Joseph closed his eyes and pictured the exterior of the mental hospital in his mind. It was right in front of him. He knew that it was right in front of him. When he opened his eyes…

“Holy shit,” Sebastian cursed.

Beacon Mental Hospital was further away than Joseph had hoped. They still had to climb a long, twisting path, and who knew how many stairs, but he had a feeling it was as close as they were going to get.

“You just teleported us right in front of Beacon?” Sebastian asked, looking at Joseph as though he had just sprouted wings. “Just like that?”

“No,” Joseph corrected him. “If you look behind us you’ll see that my fortress is right there. It’s very difficult to move yourself around the world, but moving the world around you? That is not so difficult.”

“You moved Beacon closer to us?”

“Mm hm.”

“Damn Joseph,” Sebastian muttered, staring at Joseph with something that might have been amazement or might have been fear, before shaking his head and beginning to make his way up the long path in front of them.

Joseph began to wonder if maybe escaping would be as easy as Sebastian seemed to think it would. He just hoped that his partner didn’t start to give into the fear that this place inspired. If anything was going to screw up their progress then it would be that.

_No,_  he told the world.  _Prey on the others; the ones that are already broken. You do not need to feast on Sebastian’s fear._ If only the world would listen to him. It had become a lot easier for him to manipulate things as soon as Ruvik had disappeared, but there were a thousand other broken and haunted voices that still influenced this place in their own small ways. Joseph did not allow them in or near his fortress, but who knew how many of them would be lurking near Beacon?

To Joseph’s surprise they made it all the way to Beacon’s front doors without anything significant happening. Of course the path was not all rainbows and roses. It was a twisted mess of cracked and bloodied stones, broken glass and random, inexplicable chunks of viscera, but at least nothing leapt out and tried to kill the two of them.

Joseph felt himself starting to grow nervous as they each reached out to one of the front doors and began to push them open. It couldn’t be this easy, could it? There was no way that his world would let them leave so easily.

And if it did?

The prospect of returning to a normal life made Joseph more uncomfortable than he could have predicted. How the hell was he supposed to go back to working at the K.C.P.D. and pretending that everything was all right after this was over? And what of his relationship with Sebastian? Was that really going to work out? Really?

The foyer of Beacon was exactly as Joseph remembered. There were bodies everywhere, both patients and hospital workers laying bloodied and broken on the floor and slumped over benches. They had been there for what must have been weeks at the very least, and which had felt like years to Joseph. They should have shown at least some sign of decay, but they did not. They both looked and smelled as though they had been dead for only a few hours. The metallic tang of blood seemed to fill the air.

Joseph could feel the dead wanting to rise; to come after them with teeth and claws. He willed them to be silent, to rest in peace, and they obeyed. Sebastian had his pistol drawn and was watching each of the bodies closely as they moved past them. Joseph did not even bother with that. He simply strode through them, knowing that they would both be fine.

A short walk through a hallway that would have looked perfectly normal if it wasn’t for the excessive blood-splatters and broken windows brought the two men to an elevator.

“Where to now?” Joseph asked Sebastian.

“The top floor,” Sebastian replied.

Joseph pressed the corresponding button, and was almost disappointed when the elevator immediately started to work, slowly and smoothly transferring them to the top of Beacon’s tall central tower. Sebastian kept glancing over at Joseph and the world around them as they moved, as though he couldn’t quite believe that the world hadn’t tried to kill them just yet.

Joseph adjusted his tie and glasses, and tried to ignore Sebastian’s eyes when they settled on him. He wondered whether Sebastian was scared of him now. Joseph certainly wouldn’t have blamed him.

The elevator shuddered to a halt, and the doors opened slowly, revealing a landscape much more typical of the world that Joseph had grown used to. Somewhere beneath it all he was sure that there was a floor and walls at the very least, but everything was covered in blood and gore, the hallway transformed into a dripping cavern of broken flesh.

Joseph screwed his nose up at the sight. It was rather too over-the-top for him to actually find it at all disturbing, and besides, he had enough control over himself now that even things that had been born directly from his own fears no longer affected him. It must have been Sebastian’s psyche effecting the world around them now, and Joseph cursed himself for not monitoring Sebastian’s mental state more closely.

They stepped out of the elevator, and it was then that Joseph realized something else was waiting for them. It had been resting at the other end of the corridor, but as they exited the elevator the Protected started to shuffle closer towards them.

Joseph sighed and shook his head as his creature came to a stop in front of them.

“Joseph,” Sebastian growled. “What the hell is this thing?”

“It’s harmless,” Joseph assured him. “At least it is to the two of us.”

Sebastian did not look particularly comforted by Joseph’s words.

“I didn’t call you here,” Joseph told the Protected. “What are you doing?”

The Protected let out a muffled growl and frowned at the two of them. Joseph rolled his eyes and made to step around the creature. The creature growled again and moved to block their path.

“Move aside,” Joseph told it.

It did not obey.

Joseph returned its frown and tried again.

“Move!” he commanded.

The Protected still refused to obey him. Instead it advanced, towering over them with a definite scowl on its twisted face.

Joseph began to grow worried. He was supposed to have control over the Protected. It was  _his_  creation after all. Why was it suddenly disobeying him?

He tried again to move past it from the other side of the corridor, but once again found his path blocked, this time by one of the Protected’s large, clawed hands as it slammed into the floor beneath them, cracking the tiles and causing a spray of blood to leap up into the air.

“You  _will_  let us pass!” Joseph shouted, beginning to grow angry with the creature. “I am going to leave here with Sebastian, and  _you_  are not going to stop me. Now move aside!”

The Protected didn’t growl this time. Instead it reared back on its hind quarters, lifting its claws as much as it possibly could without overbalancing, as though readying itself for an attack.

“I don’t think it liked that,” Sebastian commented, placing a hand on Joseph’s shoulder.

The Protected let out a loud, angry roar, and suddenly shards of glass seemed to come shooting out of every inch of its body, covering its skin like the spines of a porcupine. Joseph had never seen it regrow shards of glass before. He hadn’t actually been afraid of the Protected for some time, but now he started to feel the old fear returning.

“Run!” Sebastian yelled, gripping Joseph’s shoulder tightly and practically dragging Joseph after him as they began to run from the monster.

As the Protected reared up they ducked beneath its bulk, shards of glass and metal brushing past them as they did, and catching on their skin and clothing, half a dozen small scratches and tears opening before they dashed out the other side.

They continued on. Joseph didn’t know where they were going, and hoped Sebastian had a better idea of this place’s layout than he did. After all, he knew how fast the Protected could be. He was hoping that its bulk would delay it in these tight corridors, making it harder for the creature to turn around and start following them, but deep down he knew that it would not be held for long.

They soon came to a dead end, and sure enough, when Joseph glanced back, he could see the Protected, already having mostly turned around (and having destroyed a large section of the corridor in the process) and about to come running after them.

“Shit!” Sebastian cursed, before pulling Joseph into the nearest room.

The room that they now found themselves in bore only the slightest resemblance to a hospital room. Machines which vaguely resembled large old computer banks lined the walls, each of them hooked up to a pillar in the center of the room by cords that reminded Joseph more of hospital IVs than electrical or data cables.

One of the machines had been pushed out of place, leaving a fairly large gap between it and the wall. Sebastian pulled Joseph over to hide behind it. The gap was large enough for the both of them, and dark enough that it would not be easy for anything to spot them.

How intelligent was the Protected though? Would it still be able to find them? Joseph wasn’t sure. He had clearly based the creature, at least in part, on Sebastian, and Sebastian was a  _brilliant_  detective, if a little hot-headed at times.

“Why isn’t it listening to you?” Sebastian whispered as the two of them huddled together.

“I don’t know,” Joseph replied, desperately hoping that the creature’s own loud scrapings would drown out their quiet whispers. 

“But I was responsible for creating it,” he continued. “When you killed Ruvik his creations disappeared. Maybe when I leave it will disappear as well. Maybe… Maybe it knows that. Maybe it’s trying to save itself.”

Joseph didn’t believe anything that he was saying to Sebastian. He knew exactly why The Protected was trying to stop them, and it had nothing to do with the creature’s self-preservation instincts, which had never been all that strong and which possibly didn’t exist at all. No, the reason it was attacking them was a little more complicated than that.

Part of him, a disturbingly large part, did not want to leave with Sebastian. After all, here he could move mountains and control the weather. Here he had loyal servants. Here, he was practically a god. What was he supposed to do when he went back to the real world; where he was just a normal human, and where all of his power and all of Sebastian’s devotion would inevitably prove to be nothing more than just another twisted fantasy?

There was a scraping and moaning noise coming from behind one of the walls. Once Joseph had thought the sound disturbing, but now it was almost comforting. Now that metallic scraping meant safety.

The scraping and clanking came to a stop. Neither of them dared to breathe for a moment. Did the silence mean that the Protected had disappeared? No. Of course it didn’t.

There was no warning at all before the wall behind them smashed into a thousand pieces. Joseph realized immediately that the Protected had not come through the door as they had anticipated. Instead it had attacked them from behind, bursting through the wall and into their hiding place, one of its arms reaching straight towards Sebastian.

Sebastian aimed his shotgun at the creature’s face and fired a full round of lead into it. The Protected flinched and howled in pain and rage, its claws coming up to cover its now injured and bloodied face.

“Run!” Sebastian shouted, before grabbing Joseph by the arm and dragging him out of their hiding place.

As they retreated Joseph kept his gaze firmly on the Protected as his creation writhed in pain.

* * *

Sebastian cursed as they ran. He had intended to head straight back towards the elevator. It might mean retreating to a lower level of the hospital, but he would gladly suffer through a bit of backtracking if it meant escaping the monster at their heels.

In its attempt to chase after them however the Protected had smashed the hallway in front of the elevator to pieces. The path was almost completely blocked.

Sebastian cursed again and turned into a side room. He could hear the creature crashing around in the building not too far behind them, but didn’t dare turn around to check its location.

His steps took him through several rooms, until he found his way to a set of stairs. He glanced down the staircase, and then up.

Up. The elevator hadn’t taken them all the way to the top of Beacon after all.

He pulled Joseph up the stairs behind him. He didn’t know what had happened, but his partner had become little more than dead weight. Sebastian wasn’t sure that Joseph would have been running at all if it wasn’t for Sebastian’s hand clenched tightly around the other man’s wrist.

They made it up a couple of flights of stairs, before the Protected came crashing into the stairwell below them. It jumped up after them, screaming as it tried to grab them both with its long, sharp claws. Its bulk was too much for the old stairwell, and as it thrashed about, the walls around them cracked and the stairs beneath them crumbled, chunks of concrete that had once been entire steps falling far below them to shatter at the bottom of the stairwell.

The stairs beneath Sebastian’s feet gave way and the two of them fell to the ground. He grabbed the stairs above him just in time to stop himself from following the broken concrete stairs in shattering on the hard ground far below. When they had fallen he had lost his hold on Joseph, and for a moment Sebastian was afraid that his partner had fallen down the stairwell, or had already become a victim of his own creation’s sharp claws and spike-covered body, but Joseph was already standing back up beside him, looking perfectly calm despite the fall and none the worse for wear.

Sebastian jumped to his feet, grabbed his partner’s wrist once more and continued on.

They soon ran out of stairs, and Sebastian let go of Joseph’s hand in order to open the door in front of them, not knowing where it would lead and not really caring as long as it took them further away from the Protected.

This level of the hospital proved to be more open than the last. There was less blood here; more crumbling red brick and smashed glass. Sebastian had only been granted a few seconds in which to get his bearings before the Protected came smashing through the door after them.

Once again it headed straight for Sebastian.

He tried to dodge the creature, but it was surprisingly fast for its size, and one of its arms managed to reach out and catch his side as it passed, its deep claws cutting through his shirt and vest and leaving long, deep gashes in his arm.

The momentum of the creature saw it sliding along on the ground and past Sebastian, its bulky tangle of limbs not coming to a stop until it had travelled well and truly past its target, leaving him with a head start of at least a few seconds.

He searched around the room, hoping that he might be able to find something with which to hold off the Protected, but there was nothing. He hadn’t had a chance to collect anything in the way of more advanced weaponry this time, and there didn’t seem to be anything that he could use to set the Protected on fire. The last time he had been inside STEM he had been equipped with a veritable arsenal by the end, but this time around he only had his police-issued pistol and a shotgun that no longer held any ammunition, and judging by his previous experience with the monsters of STEM, a single pistol was not going to be enough to keep this thing at bay.

He couldn’t help but notice that Joseph was just standing on the other side of the room, watching Sebastian fight with an almost completely blank look on his face. Sebastian’s immediate reaction was to worry about his partner; was something wrong with Joseph?

He ran towards the other man, still very cautious of the monster at his heels.

“Joseph!” he screamed.

The other man turned very slowly to look towards him. He did not smile at Sebastian, but he did not frown either. He simply raised one eyebrow and then reached out with one of his hands. Sebastian thought Joseph must have been reaching out for him, trying to take his hand once more, and Sebastian moved quickly, knowing that if Joseph wanted his help then Sebastian needed to give it to him as soon as he possibly could.

Before he could reach Joseph however a split began to open up in the ground between the two of them. It grew, and by the time Sebastian reached the gap it was wide enough that he could no longer make the jump, at least not without Joseph’s help, and Sebastian could no longer be sure that the other man would give it. Not at that moment. If anything it seemed to him now that Joseph might be responsible for the chasm that had opened up between them.

Sebastian looked around at the now crumbling tower. Joseph had broken Beacon Mental Hospital completely in half and was now staring at Sebastian with the same detachment that he had displayed when they had first been reunited inside STEM. Sebastian looked closely at his partner and realized too late that Joseph’s eyes were the same bloodshot red as the undead that he had fought the last time he had been trapped inside STEM. His partner was pale as well; much paler than Sebastian had ever seen him before, with the possible exception of the times he had almost turned. He was as pale as one of the Haunted now, even if he didn’t have their boils and distended veins.

The Protected was charging towards Sebastian on all fours, a tortured cry emerging from its throat as it reached out for him. He fired at it, but if the simple pistol in his hands affected the creature at all then it did nothing to show it. He missed the weapons that he had found the last time, and frantically looked around, hoping that the world of STEM would see fit to give him something.

There was nothing though; not even a spare bottle or brick that he might throw at the creature. His only choice was to keep running away and hope that a way to fight against the Protected revealed itself.

Why was this thing attacking him in the first place? He had thought that Joseph had control over it. His partner had been treating it like some sort of freaking pet, and now it was trying to murder him? It didn’t make sense.

Sebastian soon found himself trapped with a solid wall at his back and the monster still approaching him from the front. He fired a round at the creature, some of the bullets slamming right into the Protected’s face, but it still didn’t seem to make any difference.

Damn it. He was stuck. He wondered if maybe he could try to crawl out beneath the creature, but it was too close to the ground. All it would need to do to kill him would be to drop down on top of him. If its weight did not take care of him then the shards of glass that stuck out of its bulk at odd angles certainly would.

“Joseph!” he screamed. Perhaps his partner could save him. Even if the creature continued to disobey its master, surely Joseph could shoot it or… or do something. He didn’t know.

“Joseph, help!” Sebastian screamed again. He didn’t like this; having to beg his partner for help. He was supposed to be saving and protecting Joseph, not the other way around.

His hands groped around for any sort of weapon at all; even a chunk of fallen stone or a wooden plank that he could hit the creature with would be better than nothing. He had always found some way out of whatever mess STEM threw him into. This would not be the only exception. Not when he and Joseph were so close to getting out.

He tried to reload his pistol, but there was no more time, and he had barely started to slip the bullets into the pistol’s chamber when he felt the swift, crushing vice that was the Protected’s hand wrapping itself around his torso. He tried to fight against it, but the more he fought, the tighter the creature’s grip grew. It moved closer, and soon its other hand was wrapping around him as well, slowly crushing his torso and forcing the air from his lungs.

Sebastian waited for it to squeeze even harder, sure that it was going to crush him completely, but no… Now that it had him firmly in its grasp, the Protected was drawing him slowly, inch by painful inch, towards the bulk of its body. Was it going to eat him? No, that couldn’t be it. Sebastian might have damaged the creature’s face, but most of it, including a large section of its mouth was still covered by its mask. The creature let out a hopeful whimper, and when Sebastian looked the creature in the eyes he realized that it was far happier than it had before.

It was still pulling him towards it, and Sebastian realized with horror that, happy or not, and whether it intended to or not, the creature was still going to kill him. If it pulled him any closer than he was going to be impaled on the large spikes of glass that extended from its torso. He tried to struggle, to squeeze out of its grasp, but in response it just squeezed him tighter, its sharp claws piercing his skin and wringing a scream of pain from his throat. He could feel the blood from his fresh wounds trickling down his sides. The Protected and its sharp shards of glass were now less than a foot away.

“Joseph!” Sebastian screamed again, seeing no way out of this mess unless Joseph stepped in to help. “I need my partner here.”

* * *

“Joseph! I need my partner here!”

_I need my partner here…_

The words were familiar. Far too familiar for Joseph’s comfort.

Joseph had been watching the fight in front of him with a strange amount of emotional detachment, but now the scene in front of him was thrown into sharp relief; the red of Sebastian’s blood as it trickled over the Protected’s claws a sight that made his heart skip a couple of beats.

_I need my partner here…_

He… he remembered that; the words, and the warmth of Sebastian’s hand as it gripped firmly around Joseph’s forearm and pulled him to his feet…

The weight of Sebastian’s body against his own after Joseph had pressed the gun to the side of his head and said goodbye, and Sebastian had charged straight at him, angry that Joseph had chosen to give up…

His partner, charging into a garden to face a giant, monstrous dog, or into a maze of cars and murderous undead or… or maybe plugging back into this nightmare… all in the name of keeping Joseph safe.

He had never wanted that. He had never wanted Sebastian to put himself in danger for his sake. He had never asked for it, and had a hard time imagining that he or his subconscious would have imagined a Sebastian that risked so much to protect Joseph, based on his fears or not.

He finally realized that wasn’t something he feared. Instead it was something that he couldn’t make any sense out of at all. Joseph wasn’t worth Sebastian risking his life over, and yet…

“Joseph!” Sebastian wailed again, his cry loud, and long, and broken, and suddenly Joseph knew, with a certainty and clarity that their kiss earlier had not granted him.

He was real.  _This Sebastian was real_. The Sebastian that had refused to give up on Joseph, the Sebastian that had watched his back and fought alongside him, the Sebastian that had faced down a monster that could have eaten them both whole all for the sake of Joseph’s stupid glasses _had been real_.

Sebastian had actually come back in here to save him, had told Joseph that he loved him, and Joseph was… Joseph was just standing there and watching the Protected kill him?

“No…” Joseph murmured, only realizing when he heard his own voice that he was speaking out loud. “No, no, no…”

No. This could not be happening. He was supposed to be protecting Sebastian, not hurting him.

“STOP!”

His scream echoed around the broken tower. The Protected stopped, Sebastian still held tightly in its clutches, only a second or so away from being impaled on the shards in the monster’s stomach.

“Put him down,” Joseph told the Protected, his voice breaking. “Please.”

* * *

The creature let out an angry snuffle, and did not loosen its hold on Sebastian at all. Sebastian was so close to it now that he could feel the creature’s warm, damp breath, a smell like old, rotting flesh liberally doused with medicinal alcohol reaching his nostrils every time it breathed out.

“Put him down!” Joseph commanded the Protected.

This time the creature let out a roar, one that sounded just human enough to make Sebastian shudder, and which made the creature’s entire torso vibrate and stretch, bringing the glass spikes in its flesh dangerously close to Sebastian’s skin.

“You’re not real,” Joseph tried again. His voice kept breaking as he spoke, but when Sebastian glanced over at his partner he saw a fierce determination in Joseph’s eyes that overrode the fear in his voice.

“I created you,” Joseph continued to speak, walking slowly towards Sebastian and the monster.

“Joseph no!” Sebastian called out, knowing that if Joseph took another step then he would fall into the chasm that he had created in the middle of the tower.

Joseph just continued to walk forwards though, not even looking down to where a pathway of bricks had begun to form beneath his feet, creating a bridge between the two halves of the tower and giving him an easy way across the gap.

“You’re born of baseless fears,” Joseph continued to speak, his voice getting more and more confident as he grew closer to the creature.

The Protected just stood where it was, watching its creator as Joseph grew closer. Sebastian had no idea what Joseph was talking about, but whatever it was, it was enough to keep the monster’s attention. It had even relaxed its hold on Sebastian, if only a little, and he was glad to have a few more inches of air between himself and the spikes of glass.

“Whatever grows between us, it’s not going to result in you!” Joseph continued to speak. “We make each other strong. We don’t… we don’t tear each other down or… or whatever I thought it was that I was going to do.”

Through most of the speech Joseph had sounded strong, confident and defiant, but at the end he seemed to lose himself a little, bringing one hand up to his face to where, Sebastian realized with some shock, tears had started to emerge from the other man’s eyes.

“You’re nothing,” Joseph told the creature, and it actually flinched in response to his words. “You have no power. Not anymore.”

* * *

The Protected howled and Joseph took a step back and covered his ears. All of the Protected’s previous cries had sounded more sad or afraid, like a dog that had been left out in the rain and was begging for its master to come and save it, but not anymore. Now the Protected sounded furious, as though it wanted nothing more than to tear the two of them to shreds.

Joseph tried to convince himself that he had spoken the truth. The Protected wouldn’t even exist if it hadn’t been for him and his insecurities. If he denied it power, or even existence itself, then surely it would have no choice but to obey?

But no; that wasn’t how this place worked, was it? Now that he had brought the Protected into being, it would continue to exist, whether he willed it or not, at least until he managed to leave this place. Maybe once he left it would finally be gone. After all, Joseph hadn’t seen the Keeper since Ruvik had disappeared. Perhaps his earlier words had been true after all. Perhaps the Protected was just scared and didn’t want to die.

“You have no power,” he told the Protected, but he wasn’t sure whether he was trying to convince it or himself. Either way the Protected paid no attention to him, its focus returning once more to the man that it clutched between its claws.

Joseph reached out, willing a weapon into his hands. He felt a comforting weight appear in his right, and glanced over to discover he was now holding a rather familiar axe.

It wouldn’t have been much in anyone else’s hands, but in his, against _his_ creation, it would be all that he needed. It had to be.

He charged towards the Protected, wielding the axe as though it was as deadly as a rocket launcher, plunging it into the creature’s arms. The Protected screamed and abruptly let go of Sebastian.

The other man fell to the ground, and then stumbled to his feet. Joseph continued to attack the Protected, the axe slamming into the creature’s flesh again and again, until it was cowering away from him.

“Joseph!” Sebastian screamed. “I could use a little help here!”

Sebastian had managed to stumble to his feet without Joseph’s assistance, so couldn’t have been too badly injured.  Joseph glanced over at him, and it took him a moment to realize what Sebastian’s problem was; he didn’t have anything that he could use to help Joseph fight the Protected.

Joseph thought back to the arsenal that Sebastian, the real Sebastian, had possessed any time he had previously appeared in this place. He closed his eyes for just a second, concentrated on bringing the weapons to life, hoping as he did that he would get them at least somewhat accurate, and soon heard Sebastian exclaim loudly as the weapons suddenly appeared on the ground near their feet.

When Joseph opened his eyes and checked on the man standing next to him he found Sebastian pointing what looked to be some sort of modified crossbow at the Protected. The other man fired a bolt at Joseph’s creation. The Protected flinched, and Sebastian fired another. Joseph pulled his own pistol from its holster and unloaded shot after shot into the creature.

The Protected writhed and howled and thrashed, and then eventually fell to the ground, still and silent. It hadn’t stood a chance now that Joseph and Sebastian were fighting it together.

Joseph breathed out, and then started to look around him. The elevator was on the same side of the now broken tower as the two men and the remains of the monster. He tapped Sebastian on the shoulder and gestured towards the elevator.

The two of them made their way over slowly, stepping carefully around the prone form of the Protected. Joseph tried to pretend that he didn’t hear it let out a tiny, pained whimper as they moved past it and towards the elevator.

Sebastian slammed a fist against the up button. The building and elevator shaft shuddered to life. Somehow, despite the damage that they had done to Beacon, the elevator still appeared to be in working condition.

The doors shuddered open slowly, with a chirping ring that was probably supposed to be cheery, but which had become so broken and distorted that it just made the elevator sound sick.

The two of them stepped inside the carriage. Behind them the Protected let out a moan that was loud enough that Joseph had no choice but to acknowledge the truth; the Protected still hadn’t been defeated.

“I hate this fucking thing,” Sebastian muttered, pressing the elevator buttons with enough force that anyone would have thought he had some sort of grudge against the machine.

Did Sebastian mean the elevator, or the world that they were stuck in, or…

No, he had to mean the Protected. There was no way around it. He hated what Joseph had accidentally brought into the world, and Joseph couldn’t blame him. He wasn’t sure that Sebastian truly understood the fears and thoughts that had allowed Joseph to give birth to such a monstrosity, but perhaps he didn’t need to.

“I’m so…” Joseph sobbed. “I’m so sorry Sebastian. I…”

Sebastian held up a hand to silence Joseph. Joseph was about to apologize again, when he noticed the other man wasn’t looking at him, but back at the Protected, which was not only moving once more, but which looked to be slowly but surely getting back to its feet.

The elevator doors were closing, but slowly, inch by agonizing inch. It wasn’t fast enough. The Protected had gotten back to its feet, and soon it would have them trapped in the elevator, and the doors weren’t closing  _fast enough._

Joseph felt the old fears begin to return. They were going to die in here, trapped in this elevator, thanks to the godawful monstrosity that Joseph had called into being. It was all his fault; if he hadn’t created the Protected, and if Sebastian hadn’t come back here specifically to save Joseph, then they wouldn’t be in this mess.

Sebastian brought up his crossbow, and shot another bolt right between the creature’s eyes. It pulled back with a howl right as the doors finally slammed shut, and the elevator started to move, travelling slowly upwards, hopefully towards freedom.

Sebastian let out a tired-sounding sigh, and relaxed against the back of the elevator. Joseph stayed where he was. He wanted to stand beside Sebastian, needing the comfort that being close to the other man always brought him, but after what he had done, almost abandoning Sebastian to the claws of the Protected, he wasn’t sure that he would be welcome.

Silence filled the elevator, and Joseph at least was afraid to interrupt it.

“Stop worrying so much,” Sebastian finally groaned.

“What?” Joseph asked.

“Look, whatever happened in there, its fine, all right?” Sebastian continued. “I won’t pretend to understand half of what you’re going through, but this place does weird shit to us all, right? Don’t worry about it.”

And then Sebastian held out a hand towards Joseph, as though he wanted Joseph to come over and take it.

Joseph smiled. He wasn’t sure that he deserved Sebastian’s forgiveness, but he would gladly take it. He moved over to stand beside Sebastian, and as soon as his left hand brushed gently against Sebastian’s right, Sebastian twisted his hand around and clutched Joseph’s as tightly as he possibly could.

“Whatever happened in here, whatever you’ve done,” Sebastian murmured, looking forward at the door to the elevator rather than directly at Joseph. “None of it counts, all right? None of it was real.”

Joseph wasn’t sure he wanted to ignore _all_ of it. After all, his first kiss with Sebastian had been in here.

“Except whatever we went through together,” Sebastian corrected himself, making Joseph smile. Apparently the other man had been thinking along the same lines as him. “That was real. _This..._ ” and with that he gave Joseph’s hand another tight squeeze, “is real. You’re a good person Joseph. STEM doesn’t change that.”

The elevator finally came to a stop, the doors sliding open with the same painful slowness that they had demonstrated the last time they had closed. Soon enough Joseph and Sebastian were exiting the elevator together, their hands still tightly intertwined.

They had to be at the top of Beacon now. The room in front of them was topped by a glass dome and looked as though it had somehow escaped the damage done by Joseph’s severing the rest of the hospital in two. It appeared to be storming outside, and the broken panels of the glass roof meant that gusts of cold, wet air were being blown onto the white tiled floor below, along with dirt and leaves and tiny shards of broken glass.

In the center of the room stood a large glass case. Inside, floating in a pale, amber liquid was a brain. It looked to be human, but was far larger than any human brain could possibly be, being a couple of feet long. It throbbed rhythmically, as though it had a pulse of its own.

Sebastian headed straight for the glass jar and the brain.

“What now?” Joseph asked.

“We smash that,” Sebastian said, pointing straight at the brain.

Joseph frowned. Was that supposed to represent Ruvik’s mind, or Joseph’s own? When they destroyed that, would he be in any danger? He was having trouble following the logic of this scenario.

Then again, maybe he was just overthinking things. Maybe the very fact that Sebastian thought that smashing that brain would allow the two of them to wake up meant that they would. Maybe they didn’t have to worry about logic or science in here. Maybe Sebastian had worked out how to make this world do what he needed without even trying.

Joseph nodded and gave Sebastian’s hand a gentle squeeze, before letting it go. He had dropped his axe on a lower level of Beacon, leaving it by the injured body of the Protected, but he found another, just like it, resting on the floor by the glass jar. He was sure it hadn’t been there a second ago, but he smiled as he picked it up.

He glanced at Sebastian, his partner nodded, and then Joseph plunged the blade of the axe into the glass jar. It immediately shattered into a hundred pieces, the brain and the liquid within falling onto the ground below. The brain let out a disgusting squelching noise as it landed on the tiles right in front of their feet.

Joseph and Sebastian glanced at one another again, they both nodded, and then the two of them brought up their feet. They then slammed their feet down onto the brain as hard as they possibly could.

Joseph’s vision went dark, and then the world around him turned into a flashing series of images. He could see Sebastian smiling at him, could see the monstrous hound that they had fought charging towards him, could see the Keeper and then the Protected and then Ruvik. There was so much blood and so much violence, and broken glass and sickeningly sweet alcohol and fire and chains, and then, in the midst of it all, somehow, against all odds, his partner’s hand on his shoulder or entwined tightly with his own.

Somehow, against all odds, there was hope.

* * *

Joseph’s eyes opened and he gasped. He didn’t know where he was, but his entire body felt too heavy and all wrong, as though he had nearly drowned.

“Sebastian?” he murmured, blinking a few times and trying to make sense of the shapes around him.

His vision started to clear, but not completely, and he realized with some annoyance that he wasn’t wearing his glasses.

Someone hovered over him, and he could make out two people talking to one another, although their voices still sounded far away.

“He’s waking up…”

“Heart rate is still elevated… and it’s climbing again…”

“Sebastian?” he tried again. Neither of those voices had belonged to his partner. Damn it. Where was Sebastian? Joseph needed him. “Sebastian, where are you?”

He looked around himself. His vision was still blurry, but he was able to make out the sparse, white room that he was in, the two doctors that were hovering over his bed, and the half dozen medical machines that he was attached to by a seemingly endless number of cords and wires.

“Where am I?” Joseph asked. There were needles in his arms and wires taped to his head. He wasn’t wearing anything but a pale blue hospital gown.

He might not have been surrounded by gore or monsters, but he wasn’t going to trust his reality. Not yet. This could all still be a trick. He just needed to find Sebastian. Sebastian would make it all better. Sebastian would help him make sense of all of this.

“Where’s Sebastian?” he asked one of the doctors. “Where’s my partner?”

“In the next room,” she began, and although it was clear that she wanted to say more, Joseph didn’t let her continue before he was forcing himself to sit up and tearing the wires off his head.

One of the nearby machines began to let out a high pitched whining noise. Joseph ignored it. He needed to find Sebastian. He needed to make sure that the other man was okay.

“Sir… Detective Oda,” one of the doctors said as she made a half-hearted attempt to stop Joseph from going anywhere. “You shouldn’t be getting up. You’ve been under for a couple of weeks. It will take a while for your body to adjust.”

He ignored her, pulling at the various cords that were attached to his skin and tearing one needle out of his arm. The doctors let out a cry of alarm, and when Joseph moved to remove the next needle the nearest doctor batted his hands away and started to attend to it herself, removing it with much more practiced and steady hands than Joseph could hope to possess at that moment.

He rolled out of bed, once more alarming the doctors as he immediately fell to the floor. His body wouldn’t respond the way that he wanted it to. He tried to summon the Protected to help him, but there was nothing. The world did not bend to his will.

The world wouldn’t do what he wanted it to.

He was free. He was actually free.

As soon as he realized it he began to laugh. It didn’t take him long before he was almost in hysterics, curled up on the floor while the doctors hovered over him as though they couldn’t quite work out what to do.

At that moment some sort of fuss broke out near the room’s entrance. Joseph looked over to catch a glimpse of a tall, dark-haired man behind a couple of people in white lab coats. Joseph’s vision was still blurred, but he would recognize his partner’s voice and movements anywhere, and the presence of Sebastian alone was enough to make him attempt to get to his feet once more.

He failed, and meanwhile at the door Sebastian had pulled out a gun from the holster by his side. Joseph was amazed that these doctors (or scientists, or whatever the hell they were supposed to be) had let him hold onto the weapon. 

“Do not mess with me right now Miss,” Sebastian yelled, pointing the gun at the woman in a manner that suggested he might be frighteningly eager to pull the trigger. “I have been through hell to get here, and a few doctors are not going to be enough to keep me away from my partner.”

One of the doctors let out a yelp, and after only a few more seconds Sebastian had pushed past the doctors and was running to close the gap of only a few meters that stood between them. He dropped down onto the floor beside Joseph, and soon enough, with Sebastian’s help Joseph was able to sit up properly, although he found that he had to lean quite heavily against his partner. Sebastian was able to grab Joseph’s glasses from beside the hospital bed as well, and Joseph grinned in relief when they were placed over his eyes and the welcoming sight of his partner’s face was brought into focus.

Sebastian looked awful. His stubble was longer than Joseph was used to seeing, and there were dark rings beneath his eyes, and yet the other man’s face was still one of the most beautiful sights Joseph could imagine.

Sebastian’s hands moved to cup Joseph’s face, holding the other man still while Sebastian looked into his eyes, perhaps looking for a trace of a dark madness that Joseph hoped with all his heart was no longer there.

“This is real, right?” Joseph asked, glancing around the room. He still found it hard to believe that they had actually found a way out of that hellscape. The room around him seemed too clean, too safe and too sensible to actually be real.

He had intended to give voice to some of these worries, but before he could Sebastian leaned in and pressed a kiss to Joseph’s lips. 

The kiss was almost as much of a surprise as the one that Sebastian had bestowed on him when they had still been trapped. It was even worse too. Joseph was sure that his mouth tasted horrible after he had been unconscious for so long, and he would really have to make sure that Sebastian shaved before they did this again, but still he found himself smiling and leaning further into the kiss.

When they pulled apart several seconds later, Joseph discovered that his partner was crying. He reached up with one weak, shaking hand to brush the tears away from Sebastian’s face.

“Thank god you’re okay,” Sebastian said, his voice shaking as much as his hands as they moved to clutch at the back of Joseph’s gown. “You are okay, aren’t you?”

Joseph shuffled closer to Sebastian, and moved to rest his head on the other man’s chest. He took a deep breath, inhaling Sebastian’s scent, and realized that his own hands were shaking as well. There was one thing the fakes inside that machine had never really been able to get right, he realized, as he breathed in the scent of bad cigarettes, Sebastian’s cologne and something else that was just distinctly Sebastian Castellanos.

He could feel a faint smile forming on his face as he answered.

“I think I’m going to be.”


	16. Okay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, here's the final chapter.
> 
> Thank you all. It's been one hell of a ride.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Okay

Joseph opened his eyes. His heart was racing, as it always did when he was woken up by a nightmare. He could remember fragments of this one; barbed wire and drowning and being in so much pain…

Wait… No. Had it been a dream? It had, right? He was out of STEM now. He had escaped. Sebastian had saved him, right?

Had he actually escaped this time or was this just another one of that place’s awful tricks? It was so hard to tell…

It was then that he felt the arm lying over the middle of his torso. It moved slightly, a couple of fingers running gently over Joseph’s bare side.

Sebastian was here. Sebastian was holding him, and it wasn’t a dream or delusion this time. His partner had really come back for him and saved him, hadn’t he? Oh god, Joseph desperately hoped that this was indeed reality, but he couldn’t be certain. He could never be certain, at least not for the first few minutes after waking. He was always sure that something was about to go wrong. Something awful was going to happen and then he would realize that he had never really woken up or escaped at all.

Sebastian said something, but his voice was so muffled by drowsiness and by the pillow that was practically smothering his face that Joseph wasn’t able to catch a single word of it. He turned as quickly as his sleep-addled body would allow him, so that he could snuggle into Sebastian’s bare chest and arms. He placed both of his hands on Sebastian’s chest, one of them landing right above Sebastian’s heart so that he was able to feel the other man’s soft, calming and oh so wonderfully real pulse beneath his fingers.

“What was that?” Joseph murmured into Sebastian’s shoulder.

“Your heart was racing,” Sebastian said, although Joseph had a feeling that wasn’t what Sebastian had originally muttered into his pillow.

Sebastian reached down to run his hands through Joseph’s hair and pull him just a little closer, and the roughness of his hands was comforting in a way that Joseph could never fully explain.

“Another nightmare?” Sebastian asked.

Joseph nodded, and in response Sebastian wrapped his arms around Joseph and held him as tightly as he possibly could. Their nightmares still haunted them both, and while Sebastian tended to respond with more violence, Joseph sometimes needing to hold his arms down so that he would stop trying to fight an imaginary foe, Joseph’s were a lot more frequent, and often he would simply need to be held by Sebastian until the last remnants of the nightmare had passed and his crying had stopped.

“How do I know you’re real?” Joseph asked, the question slipping out before he could think about it. He could still feel ghostly hands touching his face, and when he closed his eyes he could still see the warped and twisted version of the man that he loved so much, trapped behind a cage and a mask, just as much of a monster as anything else that he had fought inside STEM.

Joseph heard Sebastian exhale, and for a moment he worried that Sebastian was sick of him; of being woken up by Joseph’s nightmares and of being forced to comfort him, but no, that wasn’t it. That was never it. Sebastian was infinitely patient, and after only a couple of seconds he responded by rolling the two of them over so that Joseph was lying beneath his partner.

They stayed that way for a long time, Sebastian simply lying on top of Joseph, his weight more of a comfort than anything else could possibly be. Joseph clung to Sebastian throughout, his face buried in the crook of the other man’s neck, breathing in the other man’s scent as much as he possibly could. There were a lot of tiny things that STEM had never quite been able to replicate; Sebastian’s smell, the scratch of the other man’s stubble as Sebastian nuzzled into Joseph’s neck, and the strong, rough press of the other man’s hands on his skin.

It was enough to still the racing of Joseph’s heart. He knew Sebastian well enough to realize it probably wouldn’t be enough for his partner however, and when Sebastian’s hands started to drift lower, Joseph knew it would be a while before either of them fell back asleep. After a few more seconds of lazy caresses Sebastian started to mouth gently at the skin on Joseph’s neck.

Joseph soon found himself smiling. There were few things that made him feel as real, or as safe as the press of Sebastian’s mouth or bare skin against his own body. After all, he may have given himself over to daydreaming inside STEM, imagining stolen kisses and safe, warm arms, but he had never let himself dream of any more than that. He had never allowed himself to imagine  _this._

“I love you,” he whispered into Sebastian’s ear, suddenly overcome with emotion and gratitude. If it hadn’t been for Sebastian then he didn’t know where he would be now, or whether he would even be alive anymore.

Sebastian’s reply sounded like little more than a growl at first, but Joseph caught it, the barely hidden ‘love you too’ that Sebastian said against Joseph’s skin. The other man had always become embarrassed when it came to showing his emotions. Even now Joseph had felt the words more than heard them, but they still made him smile.

Their partnership had changed after they had both escaped from STEM. The K.C.P.D. had policies that forbade romantic entanglements between working partners, but Joseph had been well and truly ready to take a step back from fieldwork after the whole Beacon Mental Hospital incident. These days he spent more time behind a desk than by Sebastian’s side on a case. They still saw one another during the day, but their partnership was now one made up of quiet evenings curled up on the sofa together, Sebastian’s legs draped over Joseph’s own, kisses stolen in the lunch room at work when they thought nobody was looking, and nights spent tangled in one another’s limbs.

Just a few weeks after Joseph had left STEM, Sebastian had moved in with him. There had been a very brief discussion about which house they should move into, but there were too many uncomfortable reminders of Joseph’s time in STEM waiting for him inside Sebastian’s old home, and Sebastian’s own feelings about the house weren’t much more positive than Joseph’s own.

Joseph had caught himself worrying that they might be moving too fast, but their relationship seemed like the easiest thing in the world, the two of them coming together as though they were always supposed to be joined like this. Any reservations he or Sebastian might have previously held regarding a relationship between the two of them seemed so trivial after what they had faced together in STEM.

“You doing okay?” Sebastian asked. He ran his hands slowly up Joseph’s forearms, the pads of his fingers slightly rough and too warm on Joseph’s smooth skin. Sebastian’s hands continued slowly up, until he was joining them with Joseph’s own, their fingers entwining slightly, and soon Joseph was clinging to his lover’s hands.

“I will be soon,” Joseph told him. “Keep touching me?”

And Sebastian did.

And Sebastian’s touches were just like his kisses; a little too rough, a little too flawed, and so very, very  _real_. Each and every one of them was  _perfect_.

When Sebastian entered Joseph there was more pain than there probably should have been, and there would be stubble rash on Joseph’s neck the next morning. Sebastian told him that night, as he did every night, that Joseph should let Sebastian know straight away if it was too much, that Sebastian didn’t want to hurt him, but Joseph wouldn’t have it any other way. Sebastian was real… so very real, and warm, and heavy above him. Despite how Sebastian often treated him he wasn’t made of porcelain; he wouldn’t snap if Sebastian held him a little too tightly, and that night, as on many nights, Joseph needed Sebastian to hold him as tightly as he possibly could, to pin him down and leave stubble rash and a pleasant ache all throughout Joseph’s body, to remind him that this was real; that Sebastian was really there with him and wasn’t going to disappear any time soon.

By the time they were finished they were both panting and covered in sweat, but neither of them seemed in any hurry to untangle their limbs or put any distance between their bare, too-warm torsos.

“Better?” Sebastian exhaled into the mess of Joseph’s hair.

“Yeah,” Joseph muttered into Sebastian’s shoulder. “So much better. Thank you Seb.”

Sebastian chuckled.

“You don’t have to thank me for this,” he said, as he always did these days whenever Joseph thanked him for something. Joseph was grateful for the other man though, and had no intention to stop thanking him any time soon, just as he knew Sebastian would not stop objecting to said thanks; just as Sebastian wouldn’t stop treating Joseph as though he was the most precious thing in existence, liable to break if Sebastian was not careful, liable to be stolen away if Sebastian didn’t hold onto him tightly enough.

Sebastian sighed and wrapped his arms tighter around Joseph, pulling him as close as he possibly could, one of his hands threading lightly through Joseph’s hair as he did.

Sebastian’s hand ran through Joseph’s hair again and again. Joseph could feel himself drifting closer towards sleep with every one of the gentle touches. He felt so safe and warm; so much better than he had when he had woken up from that horrible nightmare.

No matter how relaxed he might now be, there was something that he needed to say before sleep claimed him. After all, Sebastian had been the most wonderful, patient, supportive partner that Joseph could have ever asked for. He would have felt terrible if he didn’t try to do the same in return.

“Are you doing okay?” Joseph asked, the oncoming threat of sleep blurring his words somewhat. Sebastian hadn’t had any nightmares for a while now, at least as far as Joseph could tell. Generally if the other man was having any real problems he would find a way to let Joseph know, but Joseph felt that it was still important to check.

Sebastian nodded, and then, just in case Joseph hadn’t been able to interpret the action, he spoke, his words muffled in Joseph’s hair and forehead.

“Be okay as long as you’re here with me…” he said.

Joseph felt his breath catch in his throat at Sebastian’s words. He didn’t think that it was possible for him to press any closer to Sebastian, and yet he tried.

The thing was, he knew exactly what Sebastian meant; understood the sentiment perhaps better than Sebastian could have ever anticipated, and in that moment he knew, that no matter what happened, no matter what horrors the world threw at them, they would get through them together.

As long as they had one another, then somehow, they would find a way to be okay.

-THE END-


End file.
